The Champion of Skyrim
by Aaron Ledgers
Summary: For some reason or another, Meeryn feels like she doesn't belong anywhere—as though she isn't exactly living in the right place. However, during a gas station hold-up on her way home from school, she unintentionally awakens a dormant power and gets shot: after passing out, she wakes up in an old wagon with her hands tied up... but oddly enough, the situation somehow feels... right.
1. Prologue: The Dragonborn Comes

**THE CHAMPION OF SKYRIM**

**Dedicated to Weston Lee Iverson, and Julie Iverson**

* * *

**Prologue: The Dragonborn Comes**

_The end of the world began in the summer of 1996, during a terrible drought that had unexpectedly taken a hold of New York City in a searing wave: the beginning of the end was an event so small that only a handful of people even witnessed it, and in fact, nobody even really understood the gravity of what they had seen that day. You see, the End began on a day when a beautiful angel somehow arrived on earth through an inter-dimensional gateway. The very air shredded and opened up with a blinding flash of light… and then, a dark blue aura somehow engulfed the area around the hole that had broken into our dimension. That incredible display of power is what announced the angel's arrival into Manhattan. _

_Her long wavy hair was a beautiful shade of auburn, she was wearing extremely old-fashioned clothing that had seen better days, and she was cradling a tattered bundle in her slender arms. Her ears were tapered into sharp points, her fingernails were long, and she had enormous feathered wings extending from her back. However, her yellow eyes were frantic and she let out a terrified scream when the flow of oncoming traffic screeched to a halt and people began honking at her; when she leapt into the air and flapped her gorgeous wings, several passerby stopped walking and stared up at her with their mouths hanging open. The woman's glittering yellow eyes flashed with fear when three more gateways opened up in the middle of the street, and with a terrified wail, she flapped her wings and soared towards the skyscrapers in the distance._

_ Her arms were shaking as she held the bundle close to her chest; after glancing over her shoulder and spotting three winged monsters flying after her through the air, the winged woman dove down towards the ground and flew at the nearest window. Lifting one of her hands, she sent a lightning bolt rocketing out of her palm and the glass shattered into a million pieces. After she dove into the building and landed, the red-haired woman whipped around and took an extremely deep breath, yellow eyes shining with fear and protective emotion._

_"**Yol…**" she breathed, filling up her lungs as her eyes began to shine with blue light; then, squeezing her eyes shut, the woman shrieked, "**TOOR SHUL!**"_

_Her shout was so loud that the sound of her voice alone made the air implode with a deafening clap of thunder: almost instantly, a cloud of blinding white fire exploded from her mouth and roared towards the monsters… two of which who fell back down to earth as their carcasses dissolved. The last charged at her with its bug-like wings flapping a mile a minute: the woman raised her palm and her brows furrowed as the air around it began to heat up. After a moment, a ball of fire exploded into existence and she threw it at the creature: however, her attack missed and the red-haired woman's beautiful yellow eyes went wide with fright when the creature slammed into her stomach. The bundle rolled out of her arms when she landed on the ground, but she was too preoccupied with keeping the monster off of her throat to worry about what had happened to it._

_Just as the creature bit down on her shoulder and injected its deadly venom, a gun went off and its head exploded into a million pieces. The woman shakily crawled away and moved towards the squirming bundle she had dropped, clutching her bleeding shoulder as she fought to stay conscious. Her white wings were leaden, her vibrant yellow eyes were dulling, and her limbs were shaking. When she picked up the bundle and moved the cloth aside, she smiled lovingly and looked up for the first time since she'd flown into the building. Several people who had been working in an office were standing backed against the wall, and a man in a business suit was pointing a gun at her. All six of them, three men and three women, looked absolutely stricken with terror._

_"Help me…" the angel whispered, voice coming out high and sweet as she struggled to crawl towards the group of people; when they moved farther away, the angel slowly shook her head and struggled to stand up. Her limbs shook violently with the effort, but she managed to do it… and once she was on her feet, she slowly made her way over to the man holding the gun. He kept it trained on her, but she continued to approach without fear in her eyes; his hands shook when she stopped in front of him. Lifting her arms, the winged woman held out the bundle and her yellow eyes filled with sparkling tears._

_"Help… me…" the woman whispered again, knees shaking violently._

_"What are you?" the man asked in a trembling voice, looking at her drooping feathered wings. "What in the world is going on here?"_

_"Please... save my child…" the redhead murmured weakly, pressing the bundle into his arms. "My child is the Key…"_

_"Key to what?!" one of the women wailed._

_"Stopping Alduin… the devourer of worlds," the angel whispered, falling to her knees once her child was being safely in the armed man's grasp. "Protect her… I'm begging you. Skyrim will fall to ruin if she does not survive… and after that, Alduin will find other worlds with souls to devour. Protect… Meeryn."_

_"What the fuck just happened here?!" the second woman whimpered, sinking down to the floor. "Am I going crazy or something?!"_

_"Hey, is she okay?!" the second man cried, running forward when the angel slumped backwards with ragged breathing; his blue eyes went wide when he realized that her face was abnormally pale and contorting with an involuntary expression of agony. "Aw, shit... what's wrong with her?!"_

_"That thing bit her!" the third young woman exclaimed, pointing at the dead creature in the corner._

_"Meeryn... save Meeryn... please..." the woman whined, clasping the man's arm with an expression of desperation._ "_**Rek saviik se Jul, Fahliil, Ogiim ahrk Kaaz! Rek se Dovahkin, ahrk Kulaas vhiing Reyliik**!"_

_"What did she just say?" the first woman asked, brown eyes wide. "What Language was that?!"_

_"Dragon tongue," the angel whimpered, closing her eyes as tears streamed from them. "My child is… Dragonborn... like myself... and her father..."_

_With those words… the mother of Meeryn D'Andesyrius passed away in the arms of a strange man she didn't even know. However, the problem was only beginning: every single one of the workers who had been present made a pact that day. Those six courageous people became a surrogate family for an orphaned angel who had been lost among mankind: unfortunately, she was living in a world that she didn't belong in… and everyone knew it would only be a matter of time before something happened. This is the true story of the Dragonborn, legend of a warrior who was glorified in a massively-produced video game called Skyrim. However, the true champion of Skyrim wasn't a Nordic warrior, a Bretan magician, a bloodthirsty Orc, a sneaky Kajhit, or even a haughty elf like the famous game proclaimed. _

_The champion was an extremely shy fifteen year old girl who was unwillingly thrust into a dangerous world._

_This is her story..._


	2. Chapter 1: Awakening

**Chapter One: Awakening**

A gentle summer breeze blew down the deserted streets as the sun began to rise: despite the hour, no cars were running along the concrete roads, and almost nobody was walking on the sidewalks. Only one person was admiring the blue morning glow that surrounded the houses in her neighborhood. Even though she was standing upright, the girl in question was only four feet and six inches tall. Her golden eyes were glittering like a sunset being reflected off a distant ocean, and her long hair shone brilliantly in the morning light... almost as though it were made of fire.

This girl's name was Meeryn Rosemerry.

The teenager shifted her bag and smiled up at the sky beautiful blue sky, feeling her heart beating a little faster with every breath she took and every second she stared up at its magnificence. Regardless of how shy and awkward she was around other people, Meeryn was always reassured when she looked up and saw that beautiful plane of blue stretching so high above her. She felt as though she belonged to the sky... or more accurately, as though she didn't belong on the ground.

_Skyrim..._ a voice whispered inside her head; Meeryn blinked and closed her eyes before letting out an irritated sigh. She had always heard that word echoing inside her mind when she looked up at the clouds: ever since she was old enough to talk, she'd heard that word over and over again so many times that she was actually kind of surprised that it still caught her off guard. On top of that, ever since she was little she'd felt as though the world around her wasn't exactly... right. She had never known why, of course, but she'd had that nagging feeling that she just wasn't where she was supposed to be: Meeryn didn't know where the right place was, but it definitely wasn't in New York. She'd never told anyone this, though: she was much too shy to speak about this sort of thing.

Meeryn was completely aware that she was abnormally timid compared to a normal fifteen-year-old girl, but she didn't know how to change that fact about herself: in fact, on days when she didn't go to her private high school, she simply threw on some old clothes and headed out into the woods behind her house so she could be alone. She had a secret garden back there, and she had been tending her flowers for so long that wild animals actually came to visit her from time to time. Handling and growing plants had always been easy for her, but she had been kind of surprised to discover that most wild animals never seemed to mind her touch.

A gentle wind blew through Meeryn's long auburn hair as she let out a yawn, feeling more sleepy than usual

Her third mother, Jennifer, had woken her up with the pots and pans routine as a way of telling her that breakfast was ready; Meeryn had nearly given herself a concussion when she'd jumped out of bed and cracked her skull against the headboard. Jenny had fervently apologized and Meeryn had told the woman she was fine, but in reality... the redhead was extremely tired since she'd been having nightmares, and she hadn't exactly gotten much sleep, so she was jumpier than usual. Her second father, Henry, had told her nearly three months ago that the bad dreams would pass, but he had been wrong: they kept getting worse, which had worried her parents.

Although, that was another thing that had always bothered Meeryn: she had three dads and three moms. Her first dad's name was Julio Gonzalas, her second dad's name was Henry Markarov, and her third dad's name was Andrew Thompson. Her first mom's name was Eliza Montgomery, her second mom's name was Sarah Conroy, and her third mom's name was Jennifer Mizuki.

And none of them were biologically related to each other.

Meeryn sighed as she thought about this, hefting her backpack and hiding her eyes as she walked through the extravagant gates of her private high school. She had arrived a little earlier than usual, so she figured she'd have enough time to read on the front steps or doze off in the library before her first class started. Rolling her shoulders and taking another glance at the entrancing sky, the small girl smiled and began skipping to her destination with a happy demeanor, feeling completely optimistic without knowing why.

That optimism was quickly cut short when a boy named Erik blocked her path with his friends.

"Hey, Freak! Your nasty yellow eyes are up in the clouds again!" Erik sneered. "Where do you think you're goin'?"

"I'm headed for the trigonometry classroom," Meeryn hesitantly retorted before shifting her weight. "You should... study for your tests or something instead of picking on other people, so can you bug someone else before the teacher puts you in detention? P-please?"

"Excuse me?!" Erik snapped, eyes widening in anger. "Salem, Anthony, Raymond, get her!"

"Ack, not again! Get away from me! I was being nice!" Meeryn squeaked, whirling around and breaking into a run; her glossy black shoes clacked loudly against the tiled floor as she bolted down one hallway and tore around a corner. She hit the library doors without even breaking her stride and shot the startled librarian a panicked look; then she darted into the bookshelves, weaving her way between the cases until she was at the back of the room. Her sides heaved as she fought to regain her breath; then she covered her mouth in order to smother a sneeze from the layer of dust she was inhaling. Once she was certain she'd be able to stay silent, Meeryn carefully peered between two books and watched as the the librarian told the boys to leave before they did something they'd regret.

_Thank God for small miracles,_ Meeryn thought, slumping to her knees and heaving for air.

"Miss D'Andesyrius?" the librarian called gently. "You can come out now, sweetie, they're gone."

"Thanks," Meeryn hesitantly peeped, poking her head around the corner. "That's another one I owe you, Miss McKinley."

"Don't worry about it," the woman chuckled, stamping a returned book and watching as the slender redhead dusted of her school blazer and smoothed out her ruffled school skirt. "I used to have the same problems with boys like that when I was your age."

"I doubt it," Meeryn muttered, lifting a hand so she could tug on a curly red lock of her thigh-length hair. When she'd been a little girl, she had always wondered what she'd looked like from other people's perspectives. They'd always pointed and stared at her bright yellow eyes in amazement or disgust, but she'd never figured out why they'd been staring at her until she was much, much older. She'd known from the start that her yellow eyes, pointy ears, and unnaturally pale skin weren't normal traits for regular a human being, but after years of being harassed by others simply for being different than them… well, she was just happy that no one had noticed that her canines extended into fangs whenever she got angry: they would have had a field day coming up with a new dog or vampire insult.

To put it simply, she was a freak: she had grown her hair out in order to hide her pointy ears and yellow eyes.

People fear what they don't understand, and what they don't understand is usually different from them," the librarian sighed, watching as Meeryn bent over and straightened her knee-high stockings before bouncing over to the main desk. "That's why they lash out at you, Sweetie: don't let it get to you too much. Anyway, I have something amazing that may help to cheer you up a lot today!"

"Really?" Meeryn asked, perking up hopefully. "You finally got the go-ahead to give me the 'forbidden game?'"

"Yep, I finally did!" the elderly woman laughed, holding up the cover with a proud wink. "You're a lucky girl today! It took me a long time to save up enough money to buy this for your Papa Henry's playstation three! It's one of the first copies, too, but it's rated M for mature so don't tell anyone that you got it from me! I'd probably lose my job or something! Since you're technically the only person on the hold list, I can renew it for as long as you want! No restrictions, no complications, it's yours! Happy late birthday, sweetheart!"

"Oh, yay!" Meeryn squealed, snatching the _Skyrim_ video game from the librarian's hand and scanning it with shaking fingers. "Thank you so much for getting me this! The annoying word that's always echoing in my mind has the name of this video game, so maybe I'll be able to find out why I'm hearing it over and over! Wow, I wish I could go home and play it right now! Although... I still have the rest of the school day to get through first, and the moron squad has no qualms about skipping classes, so I'm kind of stuck here. Shoot..."

"Maybe I can help," the librarian chuckled, going over to her desk and opening the top drawer; when she pulled out a tiny key and handed it to the girl, Meeryn frowned and took it with gentle hands. The small girl peered at it curiously before raising her gaze to one of the only three outsiders to know about her odd birth story. The elderly woman had apparently seen her birth mother appearing out of nowhere fifteen years ago, and she'd made the connection between Meeryn and her mom when her six parents enrolled her. She'd watched the girl grow up and had taken a firm liking to her shy personality.

"What's this?" Meeryn asked, blinking at the key and making the Librarian come out of her daze.

"The key to the back door," the woman replied, winking as she pointed to the door at the back of the library. "It leads out into the corridor near the drama rooms in the west wing. You know, the one-way hall that the cafeteria leads down?"

"Yeah!" Meeryn squeaked, stuffing her new _Skyrim_ video game into her backpack. "Are you sure you don't mind, though?"

"Not at all," the woman giggled, waving her hand. "Get going… and find your pretty Asian friend before they come back."

"Yeah, I will!" Meeryn laughed, giving a quick salute as she darted toward the door and unlocked it. She grinned when it opened and pocketed the key before she turned to wave at the librarian. Then the girl slipped out into the drama corridor, firmly grabbing her bag as she prepared herself to face the worst. A quick glance up and down the hallway confirmed that she was alone, which made her sigh in relief. She was lucky that those boys were probably still waiting out in front of the library.

Shaking her head and straightening her school blazer, Meeryn began to jog toward the hall that led to her first class, letting an optimistic grin once again spread across her face. However, the girl abruptly came to a stop when she rounded the expected corner and found herself face to face with an unfamiliar corridor. What was more, several light bulbs in the ceiling had been shattered and the rest were flickering with age. This was a place that had obviously been disused for years, oddly enough.

"Where the heck am I?" Meeryn asked, blinking as she stared at the decimated hallway. "I've never seen this part of the school before, and I never would have thought that all the 'posh' teachers around here would let it stay damaged like this."

After taking a glance over her shoulder and looking at the inviting hallway twinkling with cleanliness behind her, the small girl decided against going back and continued moving forward. She carefully stepped forward until she found the door that was supposed to be her classroom, but after looking at the number and taking scope of her surroundings, she paused: her classroom was 3-B, not 4-B, and the date on the poster next to the door had the date 1957 on it. Curiosity getting the better of her, Meeryn grabbed the handle and struggled to push the door open, revealing that it hadn't been used—or oiled—in a very long time. Frowning, she began to shove her weight against it repeatedly, but she let out a squeak when it flew open with a bang that echoed throughout the hallways.

The sound made people in almost every nearby class jump.

_That's gonna cost me,_ Meeryn inwardly groaned, wincing as she hastily climbed to her feet and dusted herself off. Hoping to escape another confrontation before it could begin, the small girl whirled around and bolted back down the main hall towards her trigonometry classroom. She skidded around a corner and she sprinted past a few lingering students, long hair flying.

When she finally made it to her own hallway, the girl slid to a stop and her eyes went wide: Erik Hastings and his cronies where standing in front of the door, obviously waiting for her to come running for he classroom. It was so predictable that she should have been expecting it: she was rarely ever late because she hated being scolded by the teacher. Mr. Kenton loved every opportunity he got to jump down her throat and make a mockery of her, but being late was the best chance for him to attempt it since she was careful.

"There she is!" Salem suddenly cried, noticing her standing there and pointing down the hall.

"I told you guys to leave me alone!" Meeryn shrieked, whipping around and bolting in the opposite direction. She heard shouts behind her, and a hasty glance over Meeryn's shoulder awarded the girl with the sight of four boys frantically sprinting after her. Cruel grins spread across their faces when she squealed in alarm, and they let out wild catcalls.

_If I can find Yuri and the guys, maybe I won't get pummeled,_ Meeryn told herself, zipping toward the end of the hall as students who were waiting for the third bell to ring poked their heads out of the classroom doors. As she was darting around the corner, Meeryn slipped on the freshly-mopped floor and painfully went sliding into the wall. She rapidly shook herself off and scrabbled to her feet, ducking under a thrown textbook as she went. When she caught sight of the principle's office, the girl began to sprint as fast as she could go. Her body unknowingly turned into a blur as she ran, but then she glanced up and saw Erik already standing in front of the doorway.

However, when she saw the huge history book in his hands, her heart skipped a beat.

_I'm going too fast to stop!_ Meeryn mentally wailed, covering her head and bracing herself. She let out a yelp when the textbook collided with her right cheek, losing her balance only a second before she smacked into the bully's chest and went rolling across the ground with him. She felt her head crack against something hard and stars exploded behind her eyes. She smelled something metallic before going limp; a rushing noise filled her ears.

**TXXXXXT**

"Hey, Toby? Where do you think we were born?" Kyle suddenly asked, scratching at his messy red hair. "I still can't remember anything long-term about myself, even with all the hypnotherapy the foster home is making us go through."

"Neither can I," Tobias snorted, rolling his lime green eyes as his unusual accent once again made students pause to listen in amazement: for some reason, he had a voice that pronounced the letter 'R' with a velvety rolling noise, and his voice itself was so unusual that people couldn't help but stare at him in surprise. "I'm more curious as to where all that blood came from, though. I mean, it didn't make sense to the doctors or the police officers since it was ours, but it made even less sense to me."

"Hey, guys!" Yuri called, running up to them with sleepy teal eyes. "Where's Meeryn, and what's this about blood?"

"Haven't seen her yet," Kyle explained, glancing at the girl, "and we were discussing our missing memories."

"Missing memories?" Yuri asked, frowning in confusion. "What the heck do you mean by missing memories?"

"Well, my pretty little lady," Tobias laughed, waggling his thick black eyebrows, "about a month ago, Kyle and I woke up in the middle of a strange place with no idea how we got there. We couldn't even remember our own last names."

"Not only that," Kyle added, frowning in confusion, "we woke up completely covered in our own blood, even though we weren't hurt. When someone called the police and they took us to a hospital, everyone said the blood was ours after a test."

"And I'm supposed to believe that?" Yuri asked, slanted eyes becoming skeptical. "Come on, I'm smarter than that."

"Apparently you aren't, because that's the truth," Tobias stated seriously, looking up at her with a frown. "We really don't have any idea who we used to know, and we really did wake up covered in our own blood."

"I still don't believe you," Yuri sighed, raking her fingers through her long purple hair; the Japanese girl glanced at her reflection and rolled her teal eyes before she straightened the headband on her head. Then, after examining her appearance, she nodded before walking down the hall to look for Meeryn with the boys. People who saw the trio hurried to get out of the way as they passed, but the three ignored them. It wasn't like they hadn't seen it before: kids were afraid of strong boys who hung around girls with dyed hair.

They were usually the kind of teens who picked fights.

"Maybe I should enlist in Track and Field," Tobias stated thoughtfully, scratching his wild black hair. "With that squeaky little girl always poking her cutesy little nose into trouble, I certainly get enough practice chasing all those bullies away from her, right?"

"Oh, shut up and let's find her already!" Yuri laughed, and the three of them took off. However, after nearly ten minutes the three teenagers become frustrated: they had been searching for Meeryn with almost no results, save for a large bang that had come from somewhere in the southern part of the Academy.

"I have a feeling we lost them," Tobias stated matter-of-factly, looking around in a lazy manner.

"You think?" Kyle snorted, glaring down at the shorter boy.

"Jeez, where the heck did she go?!" Yuri finally screeched, kicking a soda machine and scaring the crap out of a few students who were hurrying to their first class. "Out of all the days for this to happen, she has to disappear on the one I actually need her for something! This isn't cool, and it's pissing me off! Where the heck did that evil little runt go?!"

"Yikes, chill out!" Tobias laughed, staring at her with amused green eyes. "You're scaring the children!"

"I'll scare you if you don't shut your trap, pipsqueak," Yuri snapped, making the black-haired boy scowl: he really hated it when people called him out on his height. At five feet and two inches, he was just a stocky fellow: not some sort of midget.

"I'll keep my trap open whenever I want," Tobias stated calmly, lazily glaring up at the girl.

"Wanna bet?" Yuri snapped.

"How much?" Tobias demanded, smirking in amusement. "Your life, your love, or your tiny little titties?"

"You pervert!" the Japanese girl shrieked, jumping forward and tackling him; Tobias laughed when he easily pinned her on the ground and made a kissy face when she glared, cheeks red as she insulted him in Japanese. "Baka Hentai!"

"Same to you, sweetheart," Tobias crooned, rolling his eyes as he let her up.

Somewhere in the middle of their dispute, Kyle had glanced up and noticed that a crowd of students were gathering at the end of the hall. Frowning at the alarmed expressions on their faces, the boy straightened up and looked more closely: they were all standing at a point where the corridor split off and staring down the hall that led to the B and C classrooms. Something big must have happened.

"Guys, something's going on over there," the tall redhead stated, catching his friends' attention.

Cocking her head with furrowed brows, Yuri smoothed her ruffled blue skirt and made her way down the hall with interested eyes: it wasn't every day that something happened to rile up the students. The two boys looked at each other in confusion for a moment, then shrugged and followed the girl with equally interested expressions. However, the sight that met their eyes when they pushed through the crowd made their hearts freeze: Meeryn was lying immobile on the ground and Erik was violently shaking her shoulders in a frantic attempt to rouse her. All three teenagers felt the world dissolve as they looked at face of their friend.

"Hey, come on already!" Erik screamed, mouth twisting as his panic got the better of him. "This isn't funny! Get up and start moving, otherwise we'll pummel ya into the ground like we promised! Y-ya hear me, Freak? Come on, please?!"

There was no response from the girl, only the limp lolling of her head.

"Meeryn!" Yuri shrieked, eyes going wide as the two boys bolted forward with horrified expressions. "Meeryn! Meeryn!"

"I didn't mean to! It was an accident!" Erik squawked, jumping away from the redhead so quickly that he cracked his head against a locker. The Asian girl wasn't focused on him, though; right now her top priority was making sure that her friend was okay. The purple-haired teenager quickly knelt down and felt for a pulse in the girl's left wrist, but she felt relieved when she felt the steady rhythm. Then she halted and frowned: something about the girl's pulse felt wrong, almost as though her heart were beating a little differently than normal. However, despite the oddness of her pulse, Meeryn was alive: that was all that mattered to the Japanese girl.

Yuri turned to the boys who had done this to her friend with eyes colder than teal shards of ice.

"Is she okay?" Tobias asked, accent becoming thicker. "She's not dead, is she?"

"She's only unconscious, Toby, but she might have a concussion: that's bad," Yuri stated grimly, slowly getting to her feet and turning around to glare at Erik and his cronies. "I cannot let your actions go unpunished… so, on my honor, I will show you what you could have just done to our friend. Maybe then you'll get the message and leave her alone from now on."

With that, Yuri's eyes went terrifyingly wide, veins rippled across her forehead, and her pupils were covered with a milky sheen: all four boys let out ripping screams at the exact same moment and clutched their heads, staggering backwards as visions of crying people and agonized faces flashed through their minds. Yuri made sure that they endured the emotional pain that everyone would feel if Meeryn died, showing them the torment of going to a funeral before moving onto the consequences that manslaughter could get them. When she'd deemed that they had seen enough of reality, she let her mental power fade and her eyes returned to their normal teal color.

However, all of the students were now backed against the wall in fright, and the four boys were on the floor in hysterics.

"We're sorry!" Erik cried, shuddering as he squeezed his eyes shut. "We were just kidding around!"

"Yeah, we only pick on her because we like her! " Salem added, crying like a baby. "She's really funny, and cute, and smart!"

"You four are stupid!" Tobias spat, making all four boys and a few of the girls in the crowd flinch. "You don't torment someone because you like them, you torment them because you're jealous of them! If you really liked her, you would have seen how much you were making her suffer and stopped being cruel before it got out of hand! You almost killed her!"

"Yeah, and if you ever come near her again, I'll kill you," Kyle stated, standing up to his full height and glaring with startling blue eyes that seemed to take on a purple tinge under the fluorescent lights. "I give you my word on that, got it?"

"I'll be all too glad to help," Yuri added venomously, glaring in a way that made the crowd shiver. "Never fuck with a psychic."

"Fine, we'll leave the Freak alone from now on!" Erik shouted, sniveling like a coward as he got up and ran down the hall with his friends close behind; the gathered crowd continued to stare at three friends when Tobias huffed and knelt down next to Meeryn. However, the boy's emerald green eyes softened as he brushed a glossy lock of curly red hair away from the girl's pale face.

"We could have just lost her," the black-haired boy murmured. "We could have just lost our Meeryn forever."

"I know, and that's why I did what I had to," Yuri whispered, distancing herself from the two boys; she looked as though she was afraid they'd do something to hurt her after displaying her psychic abilities. "I'll leave now… I mean, if you want me to."

"Forget it," Kyle laughed as he gently lifted Meeryn into his arms like a bride. "I actually thought you were pretty cool."

"Really?" Yuri asked in surprise, expression becoming doubtful in an instant. "You don't think it was… weird?"

"Why would we?" Tobias asked, frowning in confusion; before Yuri could reply in shock, the third bell finally rang and Mr. Kenton came rushing around the corner with a distraught expression; he jerked to a halt when he saw the redhead holding Meeryn's unconscious form, and after blinking he rushed forward.

"What on earth happened?" he demanded, looking at the gathered students—who instantly fled into their respective classrooms and avoided answering, lest any anger from the two involved parties be turned on them for snitching.

"Erik Hastings is what happened," Kyle explained, shifting and holding Meeryn a little more securely. "From what I gathered, he was chasing her down the hall and something happened. I'm pretty sure she was only knocked unconscious by the tumble, but she hit her head pretty hard and has a huge bump. She isn't waking up, so we're taking her home for the day."

"Of course," Mr. Kenton stammered, eyes going wide. "Will you three be returning to class today?"

"No, we won't," Yuri sighed, frowning as she shook her head. "We're going to take her home and wait until she wakes up, but I promise that I'll work twice as hard tomorrow. I can't make skipping out on school an everyday habit, otherwise my dad would slaughter me… and I mean that almost literally. He is a very scary person when it comes to me getting good grades."

"As you wish," Mr. Kenton agreed, heading into the classroom.

**TXXXXXT**

"Ugh, my head hurts," Meeryn groaned, nuzzling the soft sensation that was pressed against her cheek. "I'll have to force Henry to make me some willow-bark tea before my head splits in two, otherwise I'll never be able to deal with learning how to play Skryim."

"Er, Skyrim is that new fantasy game, right? But... who's Henry?" a deep voice asked in confusion. "I've never heard her talk about someone with that name before, and I didn't even know that she had a thing for drinking tea."

"Maybe Henry is her secret crush?" an odd voice suggested, rolling the 'r' in a purring way.

"Ooh, I hope he's cute if he is," a feminine voice giggled. "I really need to find myself a good-looking man. Love triangle!"

"Who said that?!" Meeryn whispered, yellow eyes flying open wide as she twitched. "Who's there?"

"The boy who's neck you're drooling on, along with the people who helped him carry you here," Yuri giggled, glancing at Meeryn's startled expression with a grin when she finally opened her eyes. "Hey, I'm glad you finally woke up. It's been a real pain trying to carry you home without knowing where you live, so we were kind of hoping you would snap out of it."

"Yeah, and Kyle is looking pretty uncomfortable with all that drool on his neck," Toby added, snickering at the tall redhead's thoroughly unhappy expression and pale face. "He's kind of a wuss when it comes to bacteria, which is funny."

Meeryn made a noise that ended up being a cross between an awkward squeak and a goat bleat, then began to flail her skinny little legs in a hysterical panic. She had absolutely no recollection of what had just happened, so she was kind of confused and embarrassed about being carried home like this. However, she turned red when the group burst into laughter.

"What kind of a noise was that?" Tobias barked, howling with laughter. "I wish I'd caught that on camera!"

"It sounded _too_ adorable," Yuri squealed, giggling hysterically and clutching her tummy. "Oh, oh, I can't breathe!"

"Shut up!" Meeryn snapped, wincing as her head began to ache. "Ow! What happened? Did I get hit with a brick?"

"No bricks this time, but Erik _is_ what happened," Kyle croaked weakly. "Frankly, it looked like he knocked you out."

"Really?" Meeryn asked, blinking in amazement. "Wow, I didn't think he had the balls."

"You didn't answer our question, though, Little Lady," Tobias smugly pointed out, taking a turn and heading inside the abandoned football stadium when Meeryn rested her head against Kyle's neck. "Who is this Henry you were talking about?"

"Is he cute?" Yuri asked, looking extremely hopeful. "Because if he is, I wanna meet him. I love willow-bark tea."

"It's a private matter," Meeryn murmured, tone becoming solemn. "I thought I was somewhere else before I woke up."

"Oh," Yuri sighed, dropping the subject with a nod when Kyle let her hop down to the ground. "Anyway, since we didn't know where you lived, I was planning on bringing you and the boys to my secret place. I found this abandoned football stadium shortly after moving to New York, and I come here whenever things get to be too much. It's peaceful here."

"Wow!" Meeryn whispered, walking forward and brushing her hair back as she looked up at the ceiling.

"I agree with that exclamation," Kyle stated, wiping the back of his neck with a shudder. "This place is amazing."

"I call the bleachers!" Tobias laughed, accent becoming a light trill. "Time for a snooze! It's still morning!"

"You lazy ass," Meeryn laughed, shaking her head. "All you do is sleep in class, anyway, so what's the difference?"

"My, my!" Tobias drawled, expression becoming wolfish in a lazy sort of way. "I'll show you the difference."

"Eek! Don't even think about it! I made you chocolate!" Meeryn squealed, bolting away with a laughing shriek when the black-haired boy let out a mischievous snicker and began to chase her across the grass. Yuri smiled and covered a laugh when the stocky boy tackled the small redhead and pinned her against the grass on her stomach, springing a fierce tickle attack on her like a madman.

The tiny girl shrieked and laughed as he tickled her, kicking her legs in a futile attempt to get away.

"Don't kill her from lack of air!" Kyle laughed, jogging over to the far corner and poking around in curiosity.

Yuri was about to head over and help with the tickle attack when she felt something in the air begin to change: the tall girl jolted to a halt and stared ahead with wide teal eyes as a prickling feeling erupted all over her back and scalp, shoulders tensing and limbs becoming completely rigid: a small draft of air swept through her hair from behind, lifting a strand and blowing it in front of her eyes.

She felt a presence behind her… and it wasn't human.

"_Do not call for help, and slowly turn around,_" a faintly accented voice whispered, sending a draft of cold air brushing against her ear. When something cold touched her shoulder, Yuri twitched... and even though she reluctantly did as she was told, the moment she found herself staring at a burly man shrouded in a hooded black cloak, the girl had to fight like crazy not to go nuts then and there. When the man put his hands inside his robes and pulled out three black books with odd symbols on the covers, Yuri nearly blew his head off.

"W-what in the... world?" she squeaked, shaking all over as the apparition flickered and two cold silver eyes glared down at her.

_"Take these gifts,"_ a ghostly voice whispered, _"and give them to the dragonborn before she leaves. Danger comes for your young friend on swift wings, but you and those boys have inevitably been drawn into it because your feelings for her are so powerful. Another world is awaiting Meeryn's return so she may save it, but the wave cannot be altered to allow you three to follow her... all you can do is give her these and pray to Talos."_

"What the heck are you talking about?" Yuri whispered harshly, snatching the pocket knives with wary eyes. "Better yet, who the hell are you and what the heck are you doing in here? What's with the weird riddles about worlds and waves? And who the hell is Talos?"

"I am a friend," the man replied, turning around and vanishing into the shadows. "That is all you need to know."

"Hey, wait!" Yuri cried, stretching out a hand. "Don't just start spewing nonsense like a crackpot and then leave me alone to figure it out by myself, you creepy jerk! I don't even understand half what you were just talking to me about! Seriously, come back!"

"Yuri, what's wrong?" Kyle suddenly asked, tapping her shoulder. "Why are you yelling at a tackle-dummy?"

The Asian girl blinked when her vision shifted and she suddenly found herself looking at ancient football equipment.

Gooseflesh prickled up all over her entire body as she glanced down at the books in her arms.

"Uh, no reason," the girl stammered, shoving the books into her bag. "Anyway, Meeryn... does the city bus go past your house?"

"Yeah," Meeryn replied with a blink, "but I've been too scared to get on since I was in a school bus that flipped over a few years ago."

"Well, today we're riding one," Yuri snorted, rolling her eyes and grabbing the small girl's hand. "The idiotic driver won't flip anything over with me and the guys around, I guarantee it. Don't you worry about a thing, Meeryn, we've got your back!"

"Yeah, we'll knock you out with a tickle-attack before you can see it coming!" Tobias added with a grin; however, when the four of them left the stadium and made their way to the bust station, they found nothing but an empty terminal.

"Uh, so maybe this was a bad idea?" Meeryn asked, smirking in amusement when Yuri groaned in dismay and the boys flopped down on a bench to wait. "I mean, it doesn't look like the next bus comes for a few hours according to the schedule."

"Why can't public convenience transit systems be, well…" Yuri grumbled, closing her eyes, "you know, uh…"

"Convenient?" Kyle suggested, looking thoroughly amused. "Yeah, I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that, either."

"Maybe we scared all the bus drivers off," Meeryn giggled, rolling her eyes as she sat down next to Toby. "Anyway, let's forget about it for a little while. I'm having fun right now, so waiting for a bus with you guys isn't a problem. Oh, and I also have something special for all of you! Hang on, you're about to try something yummy that I rarely make for other people!"

"How are you having fun?" Yuri asked, glancing at the smaller girl in surprise when the redhead excitedly dug around in her bag and pulled out a paper sack full of homemade chocolate. The girl eagerly handed Kyle a smooth star-shaped piece, who blinked and smiled as he popped it into his mouth. Tobias grinned when she held out a heart-shaped chocolate and opened his mouth wide, which made the redhead turn crimson and look away as she attempted to put it in his mouth. The black-haired boy looked slightly disgruntled when she awkwardly missed and poked him in the cheek, but he rolled his eyes and bit down on the heart when Meeryn squirmed like crazy from embarrassment. Then the girl handed a moon-shaped piece of chocolate to Yuri, who sighed and took it with a small smile.

All three of them blinked in stunned surprise upon tasting it.

Her chocolate was absolutely delicious.

"Wow!" Kyle exclaimed, licking his lips in surprise. "This is even better than the kind they make in the stores!"

"I'm afraid I'd have to agree for once," Yuri exclaimed, wiggling all over in delight. _"Sugoi!_ Meeryn, you could become famous if you ever handed some of that stuff to the chocolate industry! I mean, wow, they'd be begging for your recipe!"

"Small, but sweet," Tobias drawled, rocking back and staring at the sky with a lazy smirk. "That's all there is to it."

"Anyway," Yuri sighed, smacking the black-haired boy's shoulder with a glare, "how are you having fun again?"

"Long story," Meeryn giggled, looking at the ground with a blush. "I finally have friends. It was really hard when I was younger, but I shut myself out by the time I turned twelve. Everyone around here already knows that I'm a bit of a space case, and they make fun of me because I was born with yellow eyes. I was always scared to get close to anyone at school… even though I really wanted to have a friend. Now I've found all of you, somehow… my life feels like it's a little easier. After all, I can talk to you and feel safe about it."

"It must have been hard on you," Yuri murmured, sitting up straight with a soft expression. "I can kind of understand what you mean about being hated, too... I mean, do you want to know why my foster mother split on my family?"

"I didn't know you were adopted!" Kyle exclaimed, glancing up at her with an amazed expression.

"Anyway, why?" Tobias asked, waggling his eyebrows. "I'm already betting that it has to do with the earlier show."

"Yes, it's because I have psychic powers," Yuri giggled, lifting her hand as an orb of crackling electricity ignited above it and swirled around like a plasma ball. "I can even control static electricity to the point where I can make machines explode."

"That's amazing!" Meeryn gasped, staring at the purple lightning ball with an expression of amazement. "I wish I had powers like that!"

"Really?" Yuri asked, cocking a pleasantly surprised eyebrow. "Well, I can control some forms of electricity, but I can't create it. All I can do is draw static to my body until it forms into a ball, and only then do I concentrate on it to make it more dangerous."

"You're pretty light for such a tall girl, Yuri, and I'm a lot stronger than I look... so maybe I can carry you around sometime," Toby snorted, throwing his head back with a howl of laughter. "In fact, I can lift two men twice my size with only one arm!"

"You liar," Kyle snorted, rolling his indigo eyes as he elbowed the smaller boy. "It was an old lady with a big purse."

"Still only one arm," the boy snickered, glaring good-naturedly.

"I have something I want to give you, Meeryn," Yuri hesitantly stated, pulling her backpack out in front of her. "They're all gifts."

"Really?" the redhead asked, yellow eyes lighting up with delight. "Wow, thanks Yuri!"

However, when she pulled out the three books and handed them to the girl, Meeryn's eyes went blank and something flickered across her mind: her entire body prickled with electricity before growing cold and then heating up at a rapid pace. However, the moment she dropped them with a surprised gasp, the feeling faded away into nothing. She blinked at the books with a startled expression.

"You okay?" Kyle asked, staring at her with a cocked eyebrow.

"Y... yeah," Meeryn stated absently, glancing down at her hands. "I... it's just that, for a moment... oh, never mind."

"Are you really okay?" Yuri asked, biting her lip with worry when Meeryn used her blazer to grab the tomes in order to stuff them into her backpack. "You look really pale and your eyes are kind of... spacey right now."

"It's nothing..." Meeryn sighed, shaking her head as though she were in a daze. "I just thought I heard a voice, that's all. Anyway, isn't there a gas station nearby? If the buses aren't running for a while, we might as well get something to nice drink if we're cutting classes."

"I agree!" Tobias exclaimed, pumping his fist with a huge grin; without another word, the boy grabbed Yuri's arm and snagged Meeryn's tiny hand before speeding off down the road. Kyle followed with his fingers interlaced behind his head. After about ten minutes, they made it to the store and walked inside. Meeryn immediately headed over to the juices, while her friends went over to the soda isle.

The elderly cashier eyed them with a look of solemn disapproval, but at the same time she was also curious.

"Isn't it a school day today?" she inquired, catching Meeryn's attention.

"Yes, but I was sent home extremely early because a boy purposely knocked me unconscious in the hallway," Meeryn stated honestly, shrugging a little bit before she turned back to the juices. "My friends are escorting me home, but I live pretty far away from here so we have to wait for the bus to come get us. We're just stopping in for a drink while we wait... ooh! Is this a new flavor of Brisk iced tea?"

"Well, you seem like a responsible young lady," the woman sighed, looking completely relieved. "Yes, that's our new apple flavor."

"Oh, I am SO buying it!" Meeryn squeaked, digging around in her skirt pocket for her wallet with bright eyes. "Green apple is yummy!"

"My... your eyes are beautiful, dearie," the woman murmured, eyebrows raising in surprise. "In fact... are those colored contacts?"

"No, but I do get that question a lot," the tiny redhead laughed, poking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth as she fumbled for her wallet. After a moment, she pulled out a five dollar bill and handed it to the cashier: once she'd paid for her drink, she turned around to find her friends all holding out their preferred drinks with big smiles on their faces. "Ugh... lemme guess: want me to buy it?"

"Please and thank you!" Tobias purred, giving her a cheerful wink.

"Sheesh, you guys need to get jobs or something like me," Meeryn giggled, rolling her eyes as she peeled a ten out of her pocket and handed it over to the grinning cashier. After that, the four of them opened their drinks and struck up a conversation with the old woman, in an attempt to 'brighten her day a bit' as Tobias had so eloquently put it. After about ten minutes of good-natured chattering, the door opened with a tinkling noise and the four teenagers politely stepped off to the side. However, Meeryn's eyes widened when the man who had just walked in pulled a gun out of his jacket and pointed it at the elderly woman, who gasped and raised her hands.

Four drinks simultaneously clattered on the ground.

"Give me all of the cash you have in the register!" the man hissed, then pulled out another pistol and pointed it at Kyle, who turned dead white and abruptly lifted his hands. "Get down on the ground, you little shits! Now! Face down!"

"W-w-w-why are you doing this?!" Meeryn squeaked, jumping and squeezing her eyes shut in terror when he turned the weapon on her and roughly pressed it against her forehead. "Please... isn't there some other way to resolve this? I mean... a better way?!"

"Shut up and get down! NOW!" the man barked, and a sudden click made everyone flinch. Meeryn obediently got down on her hands and knees before slowly lowering her head to the floor and pressing her palms against her luscious red hair. Her friends slowly did the same and mirrored her movements, but all of them were having different reactions to the situation. Kyle was shaking and had turned bone white, Yuri looked devoid of emotion, and Tobias simply looked pissed off. Meeryn simply felt terrified, and she hesitantly looked up at the man when he started waving the gun around and forced the crying old woman to put the money she'd just paid in the bag.

"The books," Yuri whispered, elbowing Meeryn in the ribs. "Meeryn... get the books and read them!"

"What are you talking about?!" the redhead whispered back, eyes widening in shock. "Yuri, this is no time to read!"

"Just do it!" the psychic hissed, making the girl freeze like a statue. "Those books might help us! I have that feeling!"

"If you say so..." Meeryn whispered fearfully, slowly lowering her arms and pulling the first book out of the bag; the same sensation from before immediately flashed through her mind, and as she slowly put the tome in front of her, a flash of dread swept through her mind with a gout of stunning clarity. A continuation of the word she had always been hearing immediately seared through her.

_Skyrim will fall to ruin if she does not survive… and after that, Alduin will find other worlds with souls to devour._

Somehow, the redhead knew that her life would change if she opened the book; the elderly woman let out a cry of fear when the man smiled and another click filled the air. Squeezing her eyes shut, Meeryn opened the cover and looked at the page: a blinding light immediately began streaming from three odd symbols that had been inked into the pages. Visions of places and people flashed into her mind as her eyesight dimmed and power flooded her veins, completely engulfing her body and causing something to change.

With a flash of bright light, a set of ethereal wings exploded through her clothing and spread themselves wide.

"Fus..." Meeryn breathed in, yellow eyes going blank with the knowledge spreading within her soul; she instinctively began filling up her lungs and she slowly crawled to her knees, tilting her head back with a shaking body before looking blankly at the man. Her glowing silhouetted wings flapped behind her as she stared at the robber with dazed eyes; the swirling light soon began illuminating her body.

"MEERYN, GET DOWN!" Kyle cried, looking up at the man with frightened eyes. "Please, don't shoot her!"

"Get back down on the ground!" the robber snarled. "RIGHT NOW!"

"Ro..." Meeryn whispered, filling her lungs to the brim.

"I said get down!" the man roared, maniacally waving the gun and making it click as he pointed it at her chest.

"DAH!" Meeryn screeched, yellow eyes rippling before flashing with bright blue light: the moment the last syllable left her soft lips, a thunderous concussion ripped through the air and every single one of the items on the shelves was blasted out of the gas station... right along with the man who had been robbing it. However, his finger slipped when he went flying and a bullet hit Meeryn in the chest.

She immediately collapsed backwards, staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes as her entire body went numb.

"What in the world was that?!" the old woman screeched, running around the counter and looking at all of her demolished shelves; she then bolted over to the girl and examined the injury she had been given by the bullet. Blood was slowly spreading through her clothes and staining her beige blazer with dark maroon liquid. Meeryn's eyes were wide and she appeared to be stunned... but not in pain.

"M-Meeryn...?" Yuri whispered, touching her wet blazer with horrified teal eyes. "MEERYN! MEERYN, DON'T DIE!"

Yuri raised her hands to grab her shoulders only a split second before a gust of frigid wind slapped her in the face: the psychic girl gasped and froze as her eyes went wide, breath being stolen from her lungs as the summer temperature dropped: the Asian girl's eyes widened when the redhead curled up and huddled against the floor, not noticing how her two male friends looked at her in concern.

Apparently, the two of them couldn't sense the temperature change.

"Why is it so cold?" Meeryn whined, rubbing her arms as the temperature dropped even more. "Eek! It's freezing!"

"What are you talking about?" Kyle stammered, frowning deeply with fright in his eyes. "It's ninety-five degrees outside!"

"Hah, you mean like forty!" Meeryn wailed, drawing her knees up to her stomach before she began to shiver and clutched her chest in pain. "Oh, God! What the hell is happening to the air around here? It feels like someone just dropped a bucket of ice on me, no joke!"

"Is she dying?" Tobias asked, placing a hand against her forehead when she began to shiver from the biting cold. "Whoa! Meeryn, your temperature is dropping so fast that I can feel it going down!"

"So, being cold after getting shot is a bad thing?" the small girl stammered, teeth beginning to chatter.

"Uh, yeah, it's a very bad thing," Tobias bluntly agreed, nodding as the gas station cashier shakily pulled out her cell phone to call for an ambulance. However, that's when something happened and the cold began to bite at the three other people as well; the old woman literally squeaked and dropped her phone on the floor in shock, and Tobias jumped into the air with a startled yelp; Kyle, on the other hand, merely began hopping up and down from the frigid wind in silence even though his indigo eyes were wide.

"S-something w-wrong?" Meeryn chattered, trying to grin and failing miserably.

"Okay, okay, I feel it!" Kyle exclaimed, hopping from foot to foot. "Seriously, Meeryn, you can turn it off now!"

"H-h-how am I supposed t-to do that? I'm n-not even d-d-doing this!" Meeryn protested in amusement, laughing jerkily as the frigid wind began to pick up and the pain in her chest increased. She let out a shriek when the bullet unexpectedly dropped on the floor through her fingers, somehow being pushed out of her body. However, she froze when she heard a familiar buzzing noise.

Somehow, she knew it wasn't a good sign at all.

"What's that noise?" Yuri whined, wincing a little at the unpleasant sound. "It's hurting my head."

"Shit, what the hell is happening to me?!" Tobias squawked, clutching his head. "My entire body is buzzing like crazy!"

"Y-Yuri, quick!" Meeryn shrieked, grabbing her bag and bolting upright despite her injury. "Grab me, and don't you dare let me go!"

"What do you mean?" the psychic demanded, gripping the redhead's arm. "What's going on?"

"It's coming for me!" Meeryn wailed, jerking in fright as a colossal wave of dark energy roared into view. The girl's yellow eyes widened and she leapt forward with a cry, wrapping her arms around Yuri's waist in the hopes that she wouldn't be swept away. Yuri and the two boys let out terrified screams when they saw the daunting wall of energy, but then the darkness enveloped them and everything fell silent. Meeryn could feel her arms still wrapped around Yuri's waist as she was encased by a feeling static electricity.

Then the ground vanished and light returned to the world as the darkness was torn away.

"Meeryn?!" Yuri shrieked, looking around for the redhead with horrified eyes. "Meeryn, where are you?!"

"Meeryn?!" Kyle shouted in alarm, catching her attention: the boy was wildly looking around for the tiny redhead. "Come on, this isn't funny! Where the hell did you go?! Meeryn, answer me!"

"Kyle, she's gone," Yurippe whispered, face going slack when she realized she couldn't sense Meeryn anywhere nearby.

"What do you know about this?!" Tobias snapped, emerald green eyes becoming angry with fear. "You're acting like you know what just happened, Yuri, so tell me where Meeryn is right now if you know something."

"She's vanished," the Asian girl choked. "I don't know where, but she's gone!"

"The police are on the way," the old woman whimpered, shakily sliding to the ground. "I don't know how I'm going to explain any of this, though..."


	3. Chapter 2: Skyrim

** Chapter Two: Skyrim**

Meeryn's ears were ringing and she felt trapped in an impenetrable darkness: her long-lashed eyes fluttered a little and she swallowed hard since her head began throbbing violently as she slowly swam into awareness. A muffled clopping noise began to pound in her ringing ears as she became more aware of the omnipresent darkness. However, the void she was stuck in was spinning like a terrifying carnival ride, and it was making her feel sick with vertigo.

She had to open her eyes, had to escape before the darkness spiraled up and swallowed her.

She struggled as her stomach clenched, fighting to tumble into the light from the spinning shadows inside her mind. With a jolt, her sparkling yellow eyes flew open and she unintentionally began to cry: silent tears began streaming down her cheeks, landing on the bouncing wood right in front of her face. It was around that moment when the muffled noises began to make sense, and the way her hearing suddenly came back felt as though cotton had been pulled out of her ears. She quickly became aware of everything as consciousness started to descend on her.

The moment her mind cleared up and she realized she was lying on something hard and uncomfortable, Meeryn struggled to sit up… but she frowned a little in confusion when she wasn't able to move her arms. Slowly and apprehensively, the tiny girl fidgeted and struggled with both of her hands on an individual level before she simultaneously lifted her palms in front of her eyes: her wrists were tied together by a rough-looking piece of rope.

A jolt of fright swept through her, but the moment she looked up, the sky drew her attention like the snap of a whip. Meeryn instantly felt her heart skip a beat, and all of a sudden… she felt stunned with the feeling of belonging that swept throughout her soul. The unnerving feeling she'd experienced most of her life... the feeling of not being in the right place and not belonging anywhere... it vanished the moment she set her eyes on that wide blue sky. A breeze swept across her face as she slowly sat up and gazed at the beautiful clouds resting so above her.

She gazed at the tall pine trees and the gorgeous mountains as the wind played with her hair.

_Skyrim… _the voice inside her head whispered, making her blink and look around. _Welcome home, Dovahkiin._

"Dovahkiin…?" Danielle mumbled, blinking dazedly at her surroundings in confusion. However, it was around that time when reality once again began to descend on her and a rational amount of fear swept through her heart: she was in a strange place that was obviously nowhere near New York City since the pine trees were monstrous in size, and there weren't any mountains there.

In fact, the mountains she was gaping at looked tall enough to be a part of the Himalayas.

That's when the cold hit her like a slap in the face and she let out a squeak: shivering violently, Meeryn awkwardly pulled her legs up and curled them below her backside in an attempt to keep her lower body warm. After looking down at herself, the girl realized that she was still wearing her school uniform, but after looking at the bloodstain in her blazer, she gasped as a memory hit her.

She had been shot… she had been shot in the chest, but somehow the wound had healed itself.

Meeryn shifted a little and sat up all the way before looking around at what she was sitting in. Her yellow eyes widened in surprise when she realized she had been lying in a severely old-fashioned wagon, but her face went blank when she saw that there were three other men in the cart with her. A blonde man with a thick beard and cold blue eyes was glaring at the driver of the cart, a dark-haired man wearing dirty-looking rags was staring sullenly at the floor of the wagon, and a man wearing old-fashioned nobleman's clothing was staring at the sky with a gag tied over his mouth. Meeryn blinked and did a double-take: their hands were tied as well.

"W-where am I?" she whispered fearfully, huddling down in the cart as she glanced from man to man; she flinched when the blonde man sitting across from her turned his head and cocked a thick eyebrow before straightening up and eyeing her face. His brows furrowed for several moments when she stared at him with wide eyes, but then his expression smoothed out and he relaxed a bit.

"Hey, you," the blonde man grunted in a thick Nordic accent, which made the girl's eyes widen. "Are you finally awake?"

"Uh… I don't really know, honestly. This feels like a weird dream," Meeryn muttered, looking up at him with wary eyes. "Still… uh, where am I, and what exactly is going on here? On top of that, who are all you people and why are the four of us tied up?"

"My name is Ralof," the blonde man stated in a deep voice, rolling his tongue on the 'R' like Tobias always did. "I don't exactly know what you were doing, and since you seem to be lacking any memory of why you're here, I'm going to assume you were trying to cross the border. You most likely walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us and that thief over there."

"Imperial… what?" Meeryn asked, fiery eyebrows shooting up. "Okay… um, this is probably a stupid question, but… where am I?"

"You are in Skyrim," Ralof grunted, eyeing her with a cocked eyebrow. "If you don't mind my asking… how old are you, and what race is your family descended from? You are very small-boned like a Breton, yet you have extremely fair features, beautiful skin, and the longest hair I've ever seen… in fact, your face is almost like a Nord's, but more delicate. Your bone-structure seems very... _queer."_

"Uh… well, I'm fifteen years old," Meeryn deadpanned, feeling completely at a loss and highly confused, "and I'm… er, human?"

"Obviously," Ralof snorted, blue eyes twinkling in amusement for a split second, "but what _manner_ of human are you?"

"Er… I'm sorry," the redhead murmured, timidly averting her eyes, "but I don't really think I have an answer that would satisfy you."

"Just shut up already!" the dark-haired man finally snapped, making the tiny redhead jump with a squeak of surprise; she hesitantly glanced up at his wrinkled face, but when she realized that he was glaring at her, she flinched and hurriedly averted her eyes again. The dark-haired man eventually returned to staring at the floor of the wagon, but his dark brown eyes burning with an expression of sullen regret and unbridled hatred. "Damn you Stormcloaks… Skyrim was fine until you came along. Empire was nice and lazy."

"Um… if I may ask, who are you?" Meeryn hesitantly inquired; he lifted his eyes and leered at her. "Also…. why are you so mad?"

"My name is Lokir… and if the Imperials hadn't been looking for _them,_ I could have gotten away with stealing that horse and been halfway to Hammerfell by now," the man retorted in a condescending tone of voice. "You, however… you're just a little girl, and I'm a simple farmer who just wants to go home. You and me, we shouldn't be here: it's these damn Stormcloaks the Empire wants."

Meeryn's jaw dropped open upon hearing his seemingly righteous declaration, and for a moment she couldn't reply.

"We're all brothers and sisters in binds now, thief," Ralof calmly pointed out, shooting him a pointed look before he turned his gaze on the redhead and examined her frightened face with sympathetic blue eyes. "All that set aside… what's your name, little lass?"

"M-Meeryn," the redhead mumbled, looking at him through her gently-curling bangs, "but I—"

"Shut up back there!" the man steering the wagon barked in an irritated tone of voice.

"What's wrong with him?" Lokir muttered sourly, shooting a glare at the back of the driver's odd-looking helmet; Meeryn, however, was severely startled when Ralof's laid-back demeanor did a total one-eighty. She jumped and blinked at him with wide eyes when immediately swung around and stared at the helmeted man with a dangerous expression in his stoic sapphire gaze.

"Watch your tongue," he commanded in a thunderous voice. "You're speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King."

"Ulfric? The Jarl of Windhelm?" Lokir abruptly demanded, looking at the gagged blonde man with stunned brown eyes. "You're the leader of the Rebellion! But if they've actually managed to capture you… oh, Gods, where are these men taking us?!"

Meeryn shivered when Ralof turned his head and stared at the cobblestone road grim expression.

"I don't know where we're going," the man stated, looking at the sky as the wind swept through his hair, "but Sovengarde awaits."

"Sovengarde…?" Meeryn asked, not liking the sound of where this was going. "Where's Sovengarde?"

Rolaf and the gagged man stiffened and stared at her in disbelief, which made the girl huddle down a little.

"It's the land of the dead, lass," Rolaf murmured, letting out a sigh. "I don't know where you're from if you don't know Heaven."

"No!" Lokir whispered, brown eyes going blank with fright. "This can't be happening! This isn't happening! I don't want to die!"

"What?!" Meeryn squeaked, shooting to her feet like an arrow. "You mean these Imperial people are going to kill us?! Why would they do something like that?! What on earth did you people do to warrant a death sentence?! What the hell is going on here?!"

"Shut up and sit down back there!" the driver barked, shooting her a dark look; Meeryn immediately sank down to the rough wood, but only because her knees gave out due to the immense wave of nausea that swept through her stomach. With yellow eyes that had gone completely blank, the girl slowly brought her bound hands up to her face and valiantly fought back her tears of fright.

This couldn't be happening to her.

It wasn't real.

There was no possible way.

But the ropes were cutting her skin, the wind whipping through her hair was freezing, the feeling of the wagon beneath her body was substantial, and she was completely aware of what was going on. It was impossible, but at the same time… everything was actually pointing towards this being very possible indeed: she was either having an extremely vivid dream, or she was on her way to die.

How in the world had such a normal day turned so nasty and strange?

"Hey, horse thief," Ralof suddenly stated in a soft voice, capturing Meeryn's attention and making the girl lower her hands; she looked at him with watering yellow eyes to find that he had a sorrowful expression on his face. "What village are you from?"

"Why do you care?" Lokir retorted in a shaken voice, sounding to be on the verge of tears.

"A Nord's last thoughts should be of home," Ralof explained in a solemn tone, then glanced at Meeryn to see that she was shaking and fighting valiantly not to cry. Her long red hair served as a perfect curtain to hide the first gleaming drops that trickled down her chin, so she used that to her advantage and lowered her head a little bit. She waited for Lokir's response as her mind went into a daze: she wasn't able to comprehend what was really happening to her, but she knew that whatever this was… it wasn't going to be pleasant.

She wanted to wake up back in her bed again, even if she didn't feel as though she belonged there.

"Rorikstead," Lokir stammered after a few moments of silence. "I'm… I'm from Rorikstead."

"What about you, lass?" Ralof inquired gently, looking straight at Meeryn with sad blue eyes. "What village do you hail from?"

"I'm from New York City," the tiny redhead sniffled, awkwardly lifting her tied hands and rubbing her eyes. "I don't know how I got all the way here, though… there are no mountains where I come from. All I want to do is go home! Why is this happening? It's not fair!"

"Life rarely is," Ralof stated quietly, giving her a sympathetic look.

"General Tullius, sir!" a man suddenly called from the wagon riding ahead of their own. "The headsman is waiting!"

"Good," another man barked in an irritated tone of voice. "Let's get this over with."

"Let's get this over with? Seriously?! What the heck _are_ we to these people? Animals?!" Meeryn whispered, sinking down with a feeling of dread in her stomach. "How can he say something like that about human lives he's going to _steal_ and _still_ call himself _human?!"_

"Shor, Mara, Dibella, Kynareth, Akatosh," Lokir chanted, squeezing his eyes shut as his face paled. "Divines, help me! Please!"

"Look at him," Ralof sneered, gesturing at the man who had leapt off of the wagon ahead of theirs and had slipped between two huge castle-like walls that towered above the cobblestone road. "General Tullius is the military governor, but it looks as though the Thalmor are with him if my eyes are working correctly. Damn elves and their peace treaty ought to rot on the side of the road... "

_Elves?_ Meeryn wondered, eyebrows shooting up in shock. _Seriously, where the hell am I? What's going on here?_

"This is Helgen," Ralof suddenly sighed, looking at the ancient buildings and small huts that lined the road with a glint in his sapphire blue eyes. "I used to be sweet on a girl from here… wonder if Vilod is still making his famous mead with the Juniper berries. Funny, when I was a boy, Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe."

"This can't be happening to me," Meeryn finally whined, curling up into a ball and burying her head in her knees. "It's not real!"

"Who are they, Daddy?" a little boy who looked to be around eight years old suddenly asked, peering at the two wagons with bright green eyes from where he was sitting cross-legged on his porch. "Where are they all going? Is this another fun soldier parade?"

"You need to go inside, little cub," the man standing behind him stated firmly; Meeryn blinked when she realized he was wearing some extremely revealing fur-armor. It was almost like something from a Native American tribe, but with metal instead of bone.

"Why?" the little boy whined, shoulders slumping down a little bit. "I wanna watch the soldiers."

"Inside the house," the man commanded firmly, pointing at the door; an old woman wearing a weathered green dress glanced at the child and nodded in agreement when his father glared. "Go inside the house, son… now."

"Yes, Papa," the little boy sighed, sounding thoroughly unenthusiastic about leaving the 'soldier parade' Meeryn was a part of; the small girl turned and looked at him, long hair blowing in the wind and shining like fire as the clouds slowly began to clear up. The teenager glanced up at the sky with frightened eyes, praying to God and all of his Angels that somehow she would make it out alive.

That was all she could do at this point: even if she ran away, she had no idea where she was supposed to go.

"Whoa!" a man suddenly called; Meeryn nearly fell over onto the gagged man's lap when the wagon jolted, but by some miracle she managed to keep her dignity despite her obvious start. She glanced ahead as the wagon she was sitting in slowed down, coming to a halt in front of a stone wall; she happened to catch a glimpse of the people in the other cart and noticed that a beautiful dark-haired woman was staring straight at her with raised eyebrows. All three men the woman was sitting with had their heads lowered weakly.

"Why are we stopping?" Lokir asked with a fearful expression.

"Why do you think?" Ralof stated grimly. "End of the line."

"Please, someone wake me up," Meeryn whispered, squeezing her eyes shut when her vision began swim with black and red spots; she forced herself to take a deep breath, but she felt extremely lightheaded when she opened her eyes and looked around once again. The colors of the world seemed overly bright as the feeling of lightheadedness slowly increased: the poor girl soon felt sick to her stomach as she stared at the green and yellow grass, but what made the scene even worse were the drab grey cobblestone that lined the keep's walls and sprinkled the road that their wagons had been going down. "No… this can't be really happening to me… it just can't be real!"

"Let's go," Ralof grunted, getting to his feet. "Shouldn't keep the gods waiting for us."

"I'm scared," Meeryn whimpered, shaking violently when the man glanced down at her. "What do I do?"

"Accept your death with honor," the man replied, looking as though it were the most obvious thing in the world; the girl blanched and shook her head before getting up and following him out of the wagon. She watched with dizzy eyes as Lokir hopped off the wagon; he immediately began to protest when a man wearing crimson, Roman-like armor shoved him forward.

"No, wait!" Lokir cried, gesturing at Meeryn and himself with frantic movements. "We're not rebels!"

"Face your death with courage, thief," Ralof commanded sternly, long blonde hair being blown in his face by the wind; Meeryn's eyes widened when she jumped off the wagon, because the two blonde men she had been tied up with were insanely huge. They actually bordered on being over seven feet tall, maybe even a little more than that: she felt like a little mouse in comparison to them.

"You've got to tell them!" Lokir pleaded, looking at the man with terrified eyes. "We weren't with you! This is a mistake!"

"Step towards the block when we call your name!" a woman standing in front of the gagged blonde man barked. "One at a time!"

"Empire loves their damn lists," Ralof sighed, shaking his head in scornful dismay; Meeryn's eyes widened and she glanced around, hoping that there would be a way for her to slip away unnoticed… or at the very least, uninjured. However, every area seemed to be blocked off by someone, and she had a feeling that there were a lot of guards in a place like this. Still, she was tempted to run away.

"Ulfric Stormcloak," a dark-haired man wearing red suddenly called, unfurling a scroll and reading it aloud, "Jarl of Windhelm."

"Lydia Montgomery," a woman called; the dark-haired woman slowly made her way forward and disappeared behind a few soldiers who were clad in crimson; the blonde man standing right in front of Meeryn simultaneously lifted his head high and stepped forward, following the tall woman's path with proud movements: Meeryn watched with shaking shoulders as he, too, disappeared behind them.

"It has been an honor, Jarl Ulfric," Ralof quietly called, thick accent becoming thicker as he glanced at the red-clad man.

"Ralof of Riverwood," the Imperial called, voice hitching a little as he glanced at Meeryn's companion; the blonde man glanced down at the tiny redhead with a reassuring smile before he followed Ulfric and the dark-haired woman out of sight. The girl immediately shivered as a gust of wind swept through her thigh-length curls, wondering why everything seemed so much colder after he smiled.

"Why is this happening?" Meeryn wondered softly, looking up at the sky with tears in her gleaming yellow eyes. "God… why?"

"Lokir of Rorikstead," the Imperial called, making the only man still standing in front of her jump in sheer terror; he immediately stepped forward, brown eyes wide and mouth trembling violently; Meeryn's stomach flopped when three of the Imperial soldiers put a hand on their swords, but her heart started beating like a rabbit caught in a cage when she saw their faces as they did so.

The men were smiling… as if they were hoping they'd be able to use them.

"No, I'm not a rebel! You can't do this!" Lokir cried, brown eyes filling with tears as he looked at the Imperials; when the soldiers merely sneered, the dark-haired man let out an angry sob and broke into a sprint. Meeryn's stomach dropped through the ground and she clenched her school skirt even though her hands were still bound: she watched him run with bated breath, hoping he'd get away.

"Halt!" the Imperial woman screamed.

"You're not going to kill me!" Lokir wailed, sprinting past the house where the little boy had retreated to.

"Archers!" the woman barked, looking at three men who were standing in front of the tower beside the house. Meeryn squealed when they lifted the weapons and sighted down the shafts, shoulders tensing up and eyes widening in horror.

"Lokir!" she shrieked, stepping forward with frantic movements. "Lokir, look out! Look out!"

Her cry came too late: Meeryn's eyes went blank and her throat locked up with an unbearable pressure when one of the guards released an arrow. In the blink of an eye, Lokir was on the ground with his scream already cut off; the redhead stared at him with shaking hands, waiting for him to get up or move around… but he remained lying down where he had fallen. The small girl's knees began to feel rubbery when she realized he was dead, and she nearly collapsed because her legs started shaking so badly.

"Anyone else feel like running?" the Imperial woman asked in a cocky tone, turning around with a satisfied expression; the man glanced at Meeryn in particular as the woman asked this question, but his mouth split into a confused frown when the tiny girl nearly passed out from shaking her head so much. She didn't want to die with an arrow in her back… hell, she didn't want to die at all!

"Wait," the man holding the scroll commanded, straightening up a little bit in surprise; he immediately began looking at Meeryn more closely, gazing at her extremely long red hair and examining her young features with furrowed brows. "You there, step forward."

"Y-yes, sir," Meeryn whispered fearfully, timidly moving forward and keeping her yellow eyes trained on the ground. Her legs were shaking so badly that she felt as though a miracle was keeping her from collapsing: she was utterly terrified of these people.

"Who… are you?" the Imperial man asked, looking at her with confused and intense eyes. "Speak your name, race, and village."

_What do I say?!_ Meeryn wailed silently, feeling her terror rising up. _What can I tell them?! _

_The truth, Little Dovakiin,_ a voice whispered inside her mind. _Tell them that you are an Angel from High Hrothgar._

"My name is Meeryn Rosemerry D'Andesyrius," the redhead stated with a trembling mouth, "and I'm an Angel from High Hrothgar."

The man's eyes widened in stunned surprise, but he immediately smoothed his expression over.

"You picked a very bad time to descend from the Greybeard's mountain, Winged Child," the man stated in a low voice, but he frowned when he glanced down at the scroll and a little spark of hope lit up his expression. He immediately turned to the woman standing at his side, completely ignoring how badly Meeryn was shaking now. "Captain, what should we do? She's not on the list."

_Please say you'll let me go, _Meeryn silently prayed, lowering her head and squeezing her eyes shut. _Please... let me go._

"Forget the list," the woman snorted, eyeing Meeryn's form up and down with something close to distaste. "She goes to the block."

"By your orders, Captain," the man stated softly, looking at the terror-stricken girl with solemn eyes. "I'm sorry, child… normally I'd make sure that your body was returned to the Greybeards, but I doubt this war would end peacefully if we sent you back like that."

"I'm not supposed to be here," Meeryn whispered, looking at him with tears in her eyes. "You Imperial people are monsters…"

"Follow the Captain, prisoner," the man stated emotionlessly, nodding to a guard standing against the wall; Meeryn lost her balance when she was suddenly shoved forward from behind, but when she felt something sharp poking into her back, she got the hint and shakily began following the woman. The girl walked along the cobblestone path with her shoulders hunched, but when she saw the group of people she had been captured with standing tall and proud, Meeryn swallowed hard and attempted to do the same.

She managed to lift her head up high, but only so she could look at the clouds above.

The view of the mountains immediately took her breath away: she had never seen them in person before, but these were even more majestic than the ones in the movies and picture books she had looked at over the years. They were so tall that the clouds started obscuring them only halfway up, and their snow-capped peaks were so radiant and majestic that she almost forgot about her fear.

Almost.

When she lowered her head and stopped walking, she found herself standing between a burly brunette and the dark-haired woman who had been staring at her from the wagon. The woman, who had been called Lydia by the Imperials, immediately sidled closer and protectively stood in front of her without even glancing down; it was almost as though she were sheltering the girl from prying eyes.

"Ulfric Stormcloak!" a man wearing bronze armor rapped out in a ponderous tone; Meeryn jumped a little in surprise before she peered around Lydia's chest to stare at the balding man. She watched as he approached the tall blonde who had been gagged. "Some here in Helgen call you a hero, but a hero doesn't use a power like the Voice to murder his high king and usurp his throne."

"Well said, General Tullius," a guard standing near the wall grunted. Meeryn watched as the blonde man glared at them, letting out a muffled grunt as his face turned red with anger. It was around that moment when the tiny redhead realized that he must have been able to do something incredible with his voice if they'd went as far to put a gag in his mouth: some things did make sense after all.

"It was a rightful challenge that the king accepted," Lydia muttered in disgust. "It's not our fault: by Nord law, that's how it works!"

"Are you a Nord?" Meeryn whispered, looking up at her in surprise.

"Yes," the woman confirmed, glancing down at her in grim amusement. "All of us, the ones wearing blue, are true Nords."

"You started this war!" General Tullius barked, making Meeryn jump a second time: he had a garish voice that had an annoying way of striking her frazzled nerves. "You plunged Skyrim into chaos, and now the Empire is going to put you down and restore the peace!"

At that moment, a distant and ominous screech echoed down from the mountains: Meeryn's eyes went blank and she went limp, yellow eyes growing wide as an unfamiliar desire to fly through the clouds swept through her soul. The small teenager actually took three unconscious steps forward before Lydia gently pushed her back using her long leg and shook her head warningly.

However, the girl was no longer aware of that: she was hearing a voice that seemed to be speaking from her very soul.

"**_Aal fin lok _**_**mahfaeraak aak ol hiu bo nau monahviings, Dovahkiin,**" _Meeryn whispered subconsciously, large eyes becoming devoid of all expression when a beautiful blue light spread out from her pupils and obscured her golden irises. "_May the sky forever guide you as you fly on your mother's wings, Dragonborn. The end times are coming: Alduin has returned to bring about the End of Days._"

"What did you say?" Lydia asked, glancing down at her with a blink; the blue glow in Meeryn's eyes winked out with a twinkle and she shook her head as though waking up from a daze. She blinked a few times and glanced around in confusion when she noticed that everyone was staring at the tallest mountain with confused expressions on their faces; the small girl shivered violently and bit her lip.

"What was that?" the male imperial with the scroll finally asked, looking a little uneasy.

"It's nothing," the bald man wearing the bronze armor grunted dismissively. "Carry on."

"Yes, General Tullius!" the woman who had ordered Lokir's death eagerly exclaimed, turning to an unhappy-looking young woman who was wearing brown robes with a golden hood draped over her head; the outfit was extremely pretty. "Give them their last rites."

The woman sighed and stepped forward, lifting her hands and tilting her head back towards the sky.

"As we commend your souls to Aetherius," the woman cried out in a somewhat gentle voice, "blessings of the eight divines upon you, for you are all the salt and earth of Niirn, our humble—"

"For the love of Talos, shut up and let's get this over with," the burly brown-haired Nord standing beside Meeryn barked, instantly stepping forward of his own accord and glaring at the woman with a fire in his eyes. "There are _nine_ divines… you've shamed us."

"As you wish," the woman murmured, lowering her eyes and slowly turning around with her head lowered. "I'm sorry."

"No… no, no, no," Meeryn chanted, feeling as though she were going to hyperventilate when the man holding the axe smiled eagerly from beneath his executioner's mask. She instinctively pressed against the warmth of Lydia's side since the woman was the only person close enough for her to do so; then she watched with wide eyes as the Imperial woman, the captain, sneered at his back.

"Come on, I haven't got all morning!" the man bellowed, spitting on the ground as the woman sauntered up behind him and put a hand on his back. Meeryn felt her heart flop when the burly Nord was roughly pushed to his knees and his head was forced onto the blood-stained cement block. Her eyes were drawn to the wooden box right in front of the groove that had been carved into it.

Her stomach lurched and she nearly threw up when she thought about her head falling in there.

"My ancestors are smiling at me, Imperials;" the burly blue-clad man stated defiantly, smirking up at the executioner with cold green eyes when he lifted the axe high above his head and sneered down at him in triumph. "Will you ever be able to say the same thing?"

Meeryn's eyes widened and she buried her face in Lydia's armor with a hysterical shriek as the axe came down: she heard a sickening squelching noise and immediately began to panic, crying hysterically and clinging to the strange woman with shaking arms. She didn't care if the people in Blue were strangers or warriors: this was wrong, she was terrified, and all of them were in the same boat.

Her heart was beating a mile a minute.

"You imperial bastards!" Lydia screeched, muscles locking up in outrage beneath Meeryn's fingers.

"Justice!" a man jeered from somewhere nearby, cheering on the inhumane slaughter that had just occurred in front of him.

"Death to the Stormcloaks!" a woman eagerly cried; her voice was full of venom and sickening glee.

"As fearless in death as he was in life," Rolaf stated woefully, lowering his head and closing his eyes in pain. "Goodbye, my friend."

Meeryn slowly pulled her face away and looked at him, but she nearly lost her breakfast when she saw the man's decapitated trunk lying beside the cement block; it was spewing a thick stream of blood onto the ground, and something white was sticking out of the spot where his neck was supposed to be. The teenager immediately closed her eyes and took a deep breath to keep from passing out.

"Next," the imperial woman called, looking at Meeryn's tear-stained face with wicked glee in her eyes. "The girl in the cute skirt."

"M-me?!" Meeryn squeaked, muscles locking up as her world spun; the second the word left her lips, the echoing sound from before drifted through the air… but it seemed to be coming from the other direction this time; everyone aside from the tiny redhead looked up in the direction the ominous noise had come from. To Meeryn, it sounded like some sort of animal… but the sound of its roar stirred something within her and made the girl want to shriek back for some reason. She felt as though it were calling for her, specifically.

"There it is again," the Imperial with the scroll muttered, scanning the sky. "Did you hear that?"

"I said next prisoner!" the woman called, looking a little irritated as she glared at the man. "Don't interrupt me, Hadvar."

"To the block, prisoner," Hadvar sighed, putting his scroll in a pouch at his side. "Nice and easy."

Meeryn's eyes had become blank at the sound of the creature's call once again: because of the odd mixture of emotions coursing through her body, she robotically moved forward with no expression on her face. Meeryn D'Andesyrius slowly stepped towards the block as the wind swept through her glossy thigh-length curls and her tresses gleam like fire. She'd always been proud of her hair, which was why she'd never cut it. It wasn't the kind of curly that made her look as though she were trying to grow curly fries; it was the voluminous kind of curly that always managed to sweep around in just the right way. Somehow, her hair always caught the best light no matter where she was standing because of the way it curled, and because of that it swept down back in a gleaming wave.

None of that mattered now: Hadvar was looking her straight in the eyes.

She gazed back at him with an expression that plainly asked, '_How could you?_'

He immediately averted his eyes when her golden irises filled with tears.

Meeryn felt weak when the Imperial woman ran a seemingly gentle hand through her long hair only to grab a fistful of it and force her down on her knees: because her pathetic height of four feet and six inches didn't allow her to do very much, the redhead didn't have a lot of muscle on her body and it was fairly easy for the captain to force her head on the block. Meeryn nearly vomited when she saw that the burly man who had been decapitated was still opening and closing his mouth in a twitchy manner; she instantly turned her head and stared up at the bearded executioner, feeling solemn and fearful when a breeze swept her long hair across her face.

However, just as the man gripped the axe and the girl was about to close her eyes, something black and enormous flew out from above one of the mountains and let out a roar that made her heart fly into the clouds. Involuntarily, she let out an answering shriek and her eyes exploded with bright blue light as she gazed at the winged creature: after a moment, she realized it was a monstrous dragon.

"What in Oblivion is that?!" General Tullius squalled when the dragon flew towards the tower Meeryn was facing.

"Sentries, what do you see?!" the captain barked.

"It's coming down from the clouds!" a Nord voice bellowed; the executioner hastily lifted his axe and was about to cut her head off when the scaly creature landed on the outpost and sent him flying forward with the gust of air that followed its landing. Meeryn's eyes went wide when the dragon's glowing yellow eyes fixed on her glowing blue ones: their gazes locked for a chilling moment in time.

"DRAGON!" Lydia wailed in shock; the sound of swords being drawn filled Meeryn's ears, but the dragon's unblinking eyes held her attention simply because she felt as though looking away would be a dangerous thing to do. The tiny girl didn't even blink when the executioner staggered around and threateningly hefted his axe, but her heart nearly stopped when the creature drew its head back.

She flinched when it let out a scratchy noise and released a wall of translucent white energy from its mouth, which was soon accompanied by a clap of deafening thunder that blew several people off their feet. Meeryn's eyes went wide and she shrieked in terror when she saw the sky beginning to swirl with clouds that soon formed a cyclone of destruction; not even a second later, a powerful screeching wind tossed her hair around and she was violently blown off the cement block. The girl landed on her side and rolled three times before coming to a halt on her stomach: she could faintly make out the sound of thunderous crashes, and she felt the earth trembling beneath her body as she struggled to get up. She couldn't get up from her position, though: it was impossible.

"Guards!" General Tullius cried, catching Meeryn's attention. "Get the townspeople to safety!"

"Divines!" a man cried. "How's it moving so damn f—AAAAGH!"

Meeryn flinched and let out a terrified shriek when a wave of scorching heat seared above her, obviously engulfing someone who hadn't had good reflexes. She struggled to roll over, but something was pinning her flat to the ground. No matter how much she struggled, the girl couldn't get to her feet and whatever was on top of her was too heavy to move without using her arms.

Both of which, conveniently enough, just _happened_ to be tied up and pinned beneath her body.

"Help me!" Meeryn wailed, kicking her legs in an attempt to catch someone's attention. "Someone, help me! I'm stuck!"

All of a sudden, the weight on her back was gone and someone was jerking her upright by the scruff of her blazer.

"Come on, Little One!" Ralof shouted, jerking her around by the shoulder and pulling her body behind him as an object that looked horridly like a meteorite smashed into the ground a few feet away. "We have to run! The Gods won't give us another chance!"

"Where the heck are we supposed to run to?!" Meeryn shrieked, looking at all of the collapsing buildings in horror as flaming balls rained down on them. "Everything is being destroyed! I don't know about you, sir, but nothing looks safe around here!"

"Run to the keep over there!" the man bellowed, gesturing wildly towards the area where Lokir had died. "Come on!"

Meeryn didn't waste any time arguing since several of the meteors raining down from the sky looked as though they were being blown around by the swirling clouds as they fell: moving meteors meant that fire could slam down anywhere at any time. So, after kicking the toes of her dress shoes on the ground and making sure they were on properly, the girl bent low and sprinted so fast that her hair flew behind her body in a gleaming wave. She heard heavy footsteps behind her and assumed that Ralof was following her, but she didn't take the chance of looking over her shoulder to find out. She wanted to get out of danger and find out what was happening.

She wanted to go home.

_You are home,_ the voice inside her mind whispered, making the girl grit her teeth.

_Shut up!_ she silently hissed, biting her tongue as she bounced up the steps and darted into the keep; the girl immediately doubled over and fought to catch her breath. After she had caught her wind, she stood up to see Ralof slamming the door shut behind the man who had originally been gagged; Meeryn fearfully glanced around and squeaked in fright when the building shook on its foundations.

Two men were lying on the ground amidst splatters of blood, and a third was tending the smaller of the two.

_"_Jarl Ulfric, what is that thing?!" Ralof cried, looking at the formerly gagged man. "Could the legends be true?!"

"Legends don't burn down buildings!" the man stated in a regal voice, looking up with a calm flick of his eyes when the ceiling shuddered and a roaring screech echoed from outside. "We need to move! Now!"

"Where are we going to move?!" Meeryn shrieked, stomping her foot in anxious frustration before pointing at the door. "I only see one exit that's currently being blocked off by falling fire balls, and one set of stairs leading to the roof of an insanely high tower! How the hell are we going to get out of this place without breaking our legs or getting our bodies blown to bits?! Where can we go?!"

"Up through the tower, Little Lass!" Ralof barked, gripping her arm and dragging her behind him. "Let's go!"

"Hey!" Meeryn cried, flailing her free arm. "Ow! What do you think you're doing?! I can run fine!"

"Stop complaining!" the blonde man snapped, continuing to drag her up the stairs; Meeryn shut her mouth and allowed the man to pull her since she really didn't know whether or not he was a real threat yet. Sure, she had just seen the Imperials murder two people, and yeah, they _had_ been about to chop her head off… but what if the Stormcloaks turned out to be just as brutal as the Imperials?

No, she had to be careful: she couldn't give out her trust so easily.

Ralof stopped when an Imperial soldier halted him with a hand: the stairway was blocked.

"Just give me another moment," he stammered fearfully. "I'll have this cleared out in no time at a—AAAAGH!

Meeryn let out a screech and tried to jerk backwards when the wall exploded inwards and crushed the man in an instant, but Ralof held her arm in a crushing grip and didn't let her go. When the black dragon's head was thrust into the gap, the blonde man threw the girl against the wall and pinned her there with his superior strength and heavier body-weight. The girl's large eyes shimmered with fear when the dragon breathed in, but then it let out a gout of fire with a horrific screeching noise, ensuring that the crushed man was dead.

Then it flew away.

Once Ralof was sure the monster was gone, he gripped her arm again and dragged her up the stairs towards the hole. He examined the area around them before glancing down at the burning house below; then he pulled Meeryn forward and gestured towards a building with a burning straw roof that rested nearly fifteen feet below them. Her stomach flipped since it was such a long way down.

"See that Inn on the other side?" Ralof demanded, gesturing at the building. "Jump through the roof and keep going!"

"WHAT?!" Meeryn squealed, staring at him in total disbelief. "Are you crazy?! That drop is, like, fifteen feet!"

"It's either that… or be burned to death after having your skull crushed like a berry," Ralof pointed out, cocking an eyebrow and purposely glancing at the rocks that somehow seemed to be oozing their own red fluid; Meeryn swallowed and her face twisted up, but she looked at the man with uncertainty in her eyes. "Go, Little Lass! We'll follow you when we can, but you need to get out of here!"

"I-if you say so," Meeryn whispered, rolling her shoulders before stepping back and taking a deep breath.

Then, with a hysterical scream, the girl sprinted forward and leapt out of the hole in the stone wall, long hair billowing out behind her like a cloud of fire. Her wide eyes were full of terror and they looked as though they were sparkling as she descended; however, the girl lost her balance the moment she landed and ended up falling on her side. Purposely ignoring the pain, the redhead crawled to her feet and staggered through the burning building, ducking around pieces of flaming straw and wood that were raining down around her.

After making it to the end of the building, she came to a hole in the floor and looked down it; after judging the distance, she sat down and scooted towards the edge in the hopes of not injuring herself. However, before she could attempt to get down, the entire building shook as the dragon passed by and she lost her balance a second time: letting out a squeak, Meeryn fell through the floor and landed on her back, practically knocking the wind out of herself; she immediately rolled over and tried to breathe before crawling upright.

"Hamming, get over here!" a familiar voice shouted. "Hamming, you need to get over here, now!"

Meeryn staggered to her feet and peered out the door to see that Hadvar and another man were beckoning to the little boy from earlier; just as the crying child stumbled to his feet with shaking limbs, the black dragon landed only a few yards away from him. The tiny girl's fiery yellow eyes widened in disbelief and she instantly bolted forward with an angry hiss: the child had locked up in fright upon seeing the winged monster, and the men didn't look as though they were going to save him since they had also frozen in terror.

"Gods!" Hadvar cried, jerking a few steps away and covering his head. "Everyone, get back!"

"You cowards!" Meeryn cried, skidding to a halt and gripping him under the arms.

Just as the dragon took a deep breath, she spotted him… the child's father was lying on the ground right in front of the black dragon. The teenage girl faltered horribly for a moment: she didn't really know what to do since she'd already grabbed the man's son and was trying to get him out of danger. However, there was no more time to react: gripping the little boy with shaking hands, the girl jumped backwards and landed painfully on her tailbone behind a pile of debris before covering the child's eyes. She wanted to keep him from witnessing his father being burned alive, but she couldn't cover up the sound of the man's scream… not for the child's ears, _or_ her own.

It shredded another piece of her already wounded heart.

"Thank you for saving my nephew!" the balding man sobbed, pulling the child into an embrace. "Oh, Hamming! Thank the Gods!"

"Still alive, prisoner?" Hadvar demanded, looking her up and down with observant brown eyes. "Well, keep close to me if you want to stay that way. Gunnar, take care of your nephew! I have to find General Tullius and join the defense!"

"Gods guide you, Hadvar," the old man wept, looking over his nephew's head at the man. "And you as well, beautiful lady."

"Be careful," Meeryn stammered in a faltering voice, feeling an odd connection with everyone around her; maybe it was the fact that such a terrifying disaster had united them, or maybe it was just because she had been thrust into a world of total danger without knowing anything or even what the hell was happening, but the small redhead wanted to save each and every person she saw.

Turning her back on the old man and little boy, Meeryn fled after the Imperial soldier and chased after him with her hair and skirt flying behind her. She noticed for the first time that he had his sword drawn when they passed by the burnt corpse that had once been a little boy's dad; she swallowed and tried to avoid looking at it as she passed, but her eyes watered when she Hadvar led her into a crumbling alley between a burning house and a stone wall. The man skidded to a halt in front of a small drop before leaping down.

"Stay close to the wall!" he shouted, looking up and cowering down just as the dragon landed on it. Meeryn's eyes widened and she dove in after him with a shriek, pressing her back against the wall as the monster took a deep breath. However, she thought she heard some sort of weird language exploding from its mouth when it breathed fire… not just an unintelligible roar. She squeezed her eyes shut as more screams erupted from behind the corner of the alleyway, and she nearly puked when the smell of burnt flesh hit her nose.

"General Tullius, over here!" a man called, making Hadvar's head snap up in surprise. "Into the keep! We're heading into the keep!"

"Quickly, follow me!" he shouted at Meeryn, turning to look at her with commanding eyes. The redhead wordlessly did as she was told, sprinting past burning corpses as unintelligible shouts, screams, cries, and terrified moans of pain filled the air right along with the sound of explosions. The girl's eyes were wide and she was shaking with the effects of an extreme adrenaline rush of some sort.

"This is like something from an action movie!" Meeryn wailed, sprinting after Hadvar with a disbelieving expression. "I've always hated those things, so why the hell did I get thrust into something that pretty much represents everything I despise?! What the fuck?!"

"It's just you and me, prisoner!" Hadvar rapped out, glancing at her from over his shoulder as he ran. "Stay close!"

"I'm trying to, you moron!" the girl snapped, glaring daggers at his back even as she heaved for air. "It's hard for me to keep up since I've got way shorter legs than you do! Why did this have to happen to me, of all people?! Yuri could have handled this better!"

She nearly bashed her face on his armor when he jerked to a halt.

"Ralof, you damned traitor!" the imperial screamed, face turning bright red. "Get out of my way!"

"No, the girl and I are escaping, Hadvar," the blonde man roared, thick neck tensing in anger. "You're not stopping us this time!"

"Fine, take her! I don't even want her with me!" Hadvar snarled, gripping Meeryn's arm and violently throwing her at him; the girl yipped and let out a squeak when her face smacked into Ralof's chest. "I hope that dragon takes you to Sovengarde, you bastard!"

"Little one, come on!" Ralof bellowed, jerking her off her feet and carrying her like a child. "We need to get into the keep!"

"No! No! NO!" Meeryn screeched, flailing her arms and legs in hysteria as she was carried into the dark. "PUT ME DOOOOWN!"

Her command was ignored and the doors closed behind them, encasing the terrified girl in darkness.


	4. Chapter 3: Blessings

**Chapter Three: The Three Blessings**

"NO! PUT ME DOWN!" Meeryn shrieked, beating her fists against Ralof's huge shoulders after the doors had closed behind them; the burly Nord ignored her weak little punches since they really didn't hurt all that much. When he took three steps forward and all but dropped her to the ground, she gave him a look of indignation. "Ow! That really hurt!"

"You wanted me to put you down; you said nothing about doing it gently," the man growled, cocking an eyebrow before he spotted something and ran right past her. She watched with wary yellow eyes as he bolted over to someone lying partially hidden under a small square table; there was a candle and some empty cups on it, as well as a book. Ralof slowly knelt down and checked for a pulse, but his rugged face became solemn after a moment. "We'll meet again in Sovengarde, brother…"

"Wait... is he…?" Meeryn whispered, face going slack with horror. "I mean, did he…?"

"Yes, he's dead," the man muttered, looking up at her pale face. "In fact, right now it looks like we're the only ones who made it. That thing was a dragon, no doubt. Just like the children's stories and the legends: the harbingers of the End Times."

"Are you trying to tell me that dragons were a myth until today?" Meeryn stammered, shaking her head. "As in, not exactly real?"

"Yes… but once, there were many of them," Ralof confirmed, nodding his head. "However, they were killed hundreds of years ago."

"Okay," the girl muttered, wincing a little when the ropes chafed her wrists, "that's an odd coincidence since I got here today, too."

A screeching roar echoed from outside the keep, seeming to agree with her obvious statement; however, there was one thing that still kept Meeryn from falling apart at the seams and going nuts: she didn't believe any of it was real. It was impossible: life used to make sense to her before she'd ended up fleeing from crazy old-fashioned murderers and an evil dragon. To Meeryn, it seemed like nothing about the world made sense anymore, so it had to be a nightmare, or a hallucination, or something—anything—other than reality.

Unfortunately enough for her mind… this experience still felt way too real to be a simple dream.

"We'd better get out of here," Ralof stated warily, eyeing the ceiling when trails of dust fell from the ancient cobblestones. "Come here, child: let me see if I can get your bindings off. Damn imperials must have tied the knot too tightly if it made your wrists bleed."

"Well, it's not like I had a lot of time to bite at the rope around my wrist," Meeryn sarcastically retorted, stepping forward and holding her arms out with a trembling mouth when he pulled out his sword; after a moment, she bit her lip and spoke up again. "Um… please don't cut me or anything, okay? I have a problem with my blood that keeps it from clotting, and if I bleed it'll take forever to stop."

"I'll be careful, Lass," the man snorted, rolling his eyes before he gently began sawing at the ropes. After a few moments of this, they slid away and fell to the ground; Meeryn instantly sighed in relief and rubbed her stinging wrists. "There you go: now that you can move around, you might as well take Gunjar's gear: he won't need itt anymore, and I'd feel much better if you were armed."

"A-armed?!" Meeryn squawked, blinking rapidly before looking down at the dead man's closed eyes in horror. "Dude, I can barely even fight in hand-to-hand combat, let alone with an overgrown steak knife! There has to be some other… wait, is that _my_ bag?"

Meeryn trailed off in her protests and and cocked her head to the side before tucking her hair behind her ear and crouching around the dead man's body: sure enough, her school back was lying beneath the table and two books were lying open on the ground. With a jolt, the redhead remembered what had happened the first time she'd looked at one of the pages in the books that Yuri had given her.

Maybe there were more things like that stored away inside the pages.

"I might not need his gear," the girl hesitantly explained, pulling her backpack and the books out from under the table.

"What do you mean, Lass?" Ralof inquired, tilting his head and staring at her as though she were insane; with hesitant movements that left the girl feeling overly shaky, Meeryn put the three books on the table and opened them up. Her eyes flickered uneasily when the increasingly familiar feeling of power swept behind her eyes: Ralof watched with folded arms and a raised eyebrow as she slowly leaned down towards the first book and read the lines on the page out loud: the sound of her voice echoed hauntingly in the room.

**_"Under Sovengarde's Blessings, the power of Water and Ice shall Radiate from my Holy Temple in ripples;  
My Sorrow shall be a cold wind across the ocean, and my Pain, a blizzard to consume all worlds.  
Let all who oppose my strength flee from the Angel of Ice."_**

Just like that, an explosion of bitter wind and brilliant blue light erupted from the book and swirled around Meeryn's body: she let out a shriek and covered her face to shield it from the biting frost and swirling ice crystals that had engulfed her, but when her long hair flew towards the ceiling and she was lifted off the ground, she tried to scream only to have it cut off before it could begin.

Eyes going wide, the small girl flailed around as the ice and blue light roared down her throat and disappeared into her body before she dropped back down to the ground. The moment she was able to breathe normally, Meeryn lifted her head and let out a hysterical shriek before shivering violently and screaming a second time… and then a third… and a fourth. It felt as though the blood in her veins had been turned completely to ice, and the frigidness of her own body was hurting her so badly that she wanted to cry.

"I'm COLD!" she wailed, flailing her arms; Ralof's eyes widened and he ducked when ice shards began flying around due to the air condensing and freezing near her palms. "WHY AM I SO FREAKING COLD?! KYAAA! MAKE IT GO AWAY! I NEED HEAT!"

"Check the other book: maybe it has a fire spell?" Ralof suggested, eyeing her hands with a wary expression. "Just be careful."

Meeryn jerkily opened the next book and frantically read the lines aloud.

**_"Under Sovengarde's Blessings, the power of Flame shall scorch the air around my Holy Temple in waves.  
My Anger shall be an ember to burn my foes, and my Wrath, an inferno to rival the flaming mountains.  
Let all who oppose my strength flee from the Angel of Fire."_**

Instead of a freezing whirlwind engulfing her, a wave of searing heat exploded from the book and ripped down her throat, burning her along the way: the girl's eyes went wide for several moments after the fire was gone, and she choked before letting out a strangled squeal and bursting into hysterical tears. She immediately clutched her throat and flailed her arms like a child as she cried: the fire had burned her so badly that she wasn't even able to say anything, but the icy feeling somehow managed to balance out the intense heat.

"Are you all right?" Ralof inquired, staring at her hands when they stopped glowing; the girl looked at the third book. "You look ill."

"I feel like I'm about to throw up," Meeryn croaked, voice coming out extremely hoarse. "One more book… that's all."

"Is it safe?" the man worriedly asked, eyeing the tomes with something close to distrust. "The other two didn't look like it."

"I don't care…" Meeryn rasped, shaking her head with a wince. "I'm reading it."

"If you say so… just hurry it up: we need to get out of here," Ralof muttered, looking around with alert eyes. So saying, Meeryn opened the third book, remembering that this was the one that had been inscribed with the odd symbols; when she opened it up, however, the symbols she had seen back in New York had completely vanished. Confused by this anomaly, the girl apprehensively took a ragged breath of air and looked at the words on the page, feeling slightly hesitant to read them aloud _or_ silently.

**_"Under Sovengarde's Blessings, the power of Air shall sweep around my Holy Temple and fuse with the sky.  
My Love shall be a spring rain that gives life to all, and my Fear, a Tempest to bring death from the clouds.  
Let all who oppose my strength flee from the Angel of Nature."_**

"You never should have read it," Ralof muttered, backing away when the room darkened and a feeling of static filled the air.

Meeryn hastily backed away from the book when it began to glow with crackling purple light: she could feel a wave of energy radiating from it, and the feeling was growing stronger with each passing second. Her yellow eyes went wide only a split second before it happened: with a deafening clap of thunder and a flash of light that left her half-blind, a bolt of writhing electricity cracked down Meeryn's throat and sent her flying. When she was finally able to sit up, Ralof blinked at her a few times before he threw his head back and howled with laughter.

"What's so… funny?" Meeryn dizzily demanded, glaring at him with crossed eyes.

"You _hair_, my good lady," the man guffawed, covering his mouth to hide his laughter and averting his eyes with a grin.

"What about my hair?" the girl groggily inquired, lifting a hand to touch it: she was stunned when she realized it was sticking out in literally every direction, making her head look like a red cotton ball to be jealous of. "Aw, god dammit! This is _so_ not cool!"

"It sounds as though your throat has healed," Ralof noted, all laughter gone in seconds. "Did you realize that?"

"Huh?" Meeryn murmured, furrowing her brows after she patted all the static out of her long hair. "Whoa, you're right… my throat doesn't even hurt anymore, and in fact, I actually feel better than I did before I read any of the books; what's up with that?"

"Sadness, pain, love, anger, fear, and wrath," Ralof muttered, furrowing his brows before he stiffened. "Emotions! Try getting mad!"

"Excuse me?" Meeryn scoffed, blinking at him in confusion. "Why the heck should I do that?!"

"If you don't, I will _hit_ you… _woman_," the man snarled, purposely adding a derogatory inflection on the last word. Meeryn's shackles rose and she immediately stood up and clenched her fists in outrage, completely unaware that the air around them was heating up so fast that areas had already caught fire. Ralof smirked in triumph and wiggled his eyebrows before gesturing to her hands; the girl glanced down at her palms with a confused expression, but she nearly jumped out of her own skin when she noticed the flames.

"What the heck?!" she squeaked, eyes widening even further when the fire diminished and instead her fingers began to spark. "Whoa! How am I doing this?! My fingers look like little lightning makers right now! This is so… so… freaky!"

"I knew it," Ralof chuckled, patting his blade with a proud expression. "Emotions trigger the powers you've obtained."

"I feel like a girl from a superhero movie right now," Meeryn murmured in amazement, flexing her tiny hands before she slipped her backpack over her shoulders and tightened her shoe laces. Once she was ready, she glanced at Ralof, who nodded.

"Test your Magicka while I try to find us a way out of here," the man stated, thick accent sounding amused; Meeryn blinked and shrugged before she pulled her ribbon out of her pocket and tied her long hair into a braid to keep it out of her eyes. Once she was done fixing it and had tied the ribbon in place at the very end, the girl flexed her hands and thought about her emotions.

Memories seemed to be the best trick, so she thought about how she'd felt when Lokir had been murdered and lifted her hands.

Almost instantly, her hands began to radiate a combination of feeling: static electricity and icy air. However, the girl was startled when a blast of cold air surged away from her palms and froze the wall completely solid; almost simultaneously, a violet glow engulfed her tiny hands and beautiful strands of miniature lightning exploded from her fingertips to brush against the cobblestone.

"This so cool!" Meeryn exclaimed, jumping up and down in total exhilaration; however, her powers fizzled out and she pouted until a blast of air surrounded her hands. She hesitantly lifted them up and thought about what she could do other than dry wet clothes; after a moment, she smiled broadly and extended her hands before clumsily directing the air to form a dust devil. Her plan worked: a cyclone of dusty air formed in the middle of the room and extended higher and higher until it reached the dome of the ceiling.

The best part?

Meeryn didn't even feel tired.

"Ugh, the lock on this gate was made much too well for me to pick with my limited knowledge," Ralof finally muttered, catching the girl's attention when he threw his busted lock pick away and worriedly glanced at the other gate. "Let's see about that one over there."

"Do you think we'll manage to get out of here?" Meeryn asked, suddenly remember where she really was. "What are we going to do?"

"We'll cross that stream when we get there," the man stated calmly, glancing at her before he examined the gate; after a few moments of gazing at its metalwork, his brows furrowed in dismay. "Damn! There no way to open it from our side. We're trapped in here."

"What do you mean?" Meeryn asked, heart skipping a beat; her hands immediately sparked and began glowing purple. However, before Ralof could reply, the sound of a rusty gate being opened made the two of them peered through the bars. Two men and the Imperial captain rushed into the corridor at the opposite end of where Ralof and Meeryn were looking out of; the blonde man instantly pulled her to the side and covered her mouth when she tried to let out a protest.

"It's the imperials," he hissed, giving her a warning glance. "Stay right here unless it's absolutely necessary!"

"They're coming this way," Meeryn whispered fearfully from behind his enormous hand. "What will we do if they attack us?"

"Fight for our lives," the man stated in a soothing tone. "Don't worry… I was tutored how to battle by Ulfric Stormcloak himself."

"Come on, men, keep moving!" the woman in the hall shouted angrily, making the man tense. "We have to get out of here!"

A few seconds later, the sound of a lock clicking assaulted Meeryn's ears and Ralof dragged her as far away from the gate as possible before drawing his sword and taking on a battle stance. The moment the Captain saw them, she drew her weapon and snarled at them like a savage animal rather than a woman; Ralof cracked his neck, but otherwise remained unaffected by her open hostility.

"Stormcloak Bastards!" one of the men behind her snarled, drawing his sword and lunging at the blonde man; Ralof easily parried the blow and socked the guy in the stomach so hard that he was lifted off his feet and practically impaled by the Nord's fist; then he threw up the contents in his stomach and went limp as he passed out, still in the air with his feet dangling on the ground. Ralof tossed his unconscious body aside and deflected a blow from the other man before cracking him in the back of the neck with his elbow.

He dropped like a sack of potatoes.

The captain narrowed her eyes at the blonde man, eying him up and down.

"You didn't kill my men," she stated simply, still expressing open hostility even though it was now marred with skepticism. "Why?"

"Needless bloodshed is pointless right now, when so many casualties are happening to innocent civilians," Ralof retorted in a thundering voice, glaring down at the small woman with narrowed eyes. "Sheathe your blade and no more need be said."

"And in the process, I get charged with treason for letting a Stormcloak _dog_ escape," the woman sneered, bouncing from foot to foot with a smirk on her face. "I'd rather die in battle than lose my honor and pride, thank you very much. Give me all you got."

"With pleasure, Imperial wench," Ralof growled, stepping forward with his blade held up; however, a wave of water unexpectedly exploded past his head and doused the woman in the face. When she landed on her back and her sword clattered on the ground, Meeryn bolted forward and leapt on top of her chest before pinning her arms down using all of her strength. "What in blazes do you think you're you doing?! Are you trying to get yourself killed, or are you simply mad?! Let a true warrior handle a fight like this!"

"Oh, shut up you big oaf," Meeryn snapped, glaring down into the woman's blinking eyes. "You, Ma'am, are going to regret ever sentencing me to be put to death. I didn't do anything to deserve it, nor did I break any of your freakish laws! So, as a way of saying thanks for killing two people in front of me and almost being the one to make my head to plop into a smelly basket, I'm going to freeze your arms and legs to this floor until your friends wake up! I hope you enjoy getting frostbite; it's the least I could do!"

"I'll gut you like a fish, little girl!" the woman screeched, fighting against Meeryn's hands when the girl slowly began to freeze her to the cobblestone ground. "You'll never escape from the empire once I get out of here! I'll have your head put on a stake as a warning!"

"Oh?" Meeryn asked in a low voice, yellow eyes narrowing in anger as she leaned down. "You know, I'm doing you a _favor_ by letting you live today: if I'm not mistaken, this is a mercy even a _king_ would be grateful for… so you should probably shut your mouth before I let my acquaintance shut it _permanently._ This is a warning, lady: never fuck with a girl who was born in New York City!"

"I'll kill you!" the woman hissed, spitting at her. "I swear it.'

"I dare you to try it sometime," Meeryn snorted, rolling her eyes as she finished the freezing process. "However, now it's time for bad old ladies to go to bed and think about how naughty they've been. I hope your dreams are sweeter than the one I'm having right now."

And with that, the girl drew her fist back and punched the woman in the nose: her head lolled as she was knocked unconscious.

"Impressive," Ralof stated bluntly, eying her with raised eyebrows. "You have more courage than I thought."

"Anyone would be terrified if they were facing an enemy with their hands tied up," Meeryn retorted, folding her arms and cocking a hip as she gave him a classic diva-on-a-rampage look. "I don't know about you, but I'm not scared of a fight if I know I can _win_ it."

"You _are_ an odd one," Ralof muttered, shaking his head.

"True, but I'm also pretty damn smart," Meeryn countered smugly, twirling a ring of keys on her finger as she smiled at the ceiling; Ralof's eyes went wide and he whistled before scratching at his beard. "Don't ever underestimate a girl you just met, okay?"

"I'll keep that in mind," the Nord muttered, shaking his head in amazement. "Unlock that door and let's get out of here."

"Pushy as ever," the girl muttered, trotting forward and awkwardly sticking the key in the lock; once it was open, the man sighed in relief and grabbed her arm before dragging her along behind him. "Ow! Hey, loosen up with the grip already! I'm delicate!"

"Sorry," he snorted, rolling his eyes in dismay before loosening his grip and letting her go completely. "Come on, lass! Let's get out of here before that dragon brings the whole tower down on our heads. Keep your guard up and don't fall too far behind me!"

"Gotcha!" Meeryn chirped, nodding fervently as she hefted her backpack. "I'll be right behind you!"

"Let's go," he grunted, hefting his sword and hurrying through the gates; Meeryn immediately hiked up her backpack and grabbed the straps before following him at a run, braid bouncing behind her as she kept a steady pace through the tower. She followed him down a set of spiraling stairs, the sound of her dress shoes clacking loudly against the cobblestone as she went, until they came to an open gateway ensnared by wooden beams. The man ran through it before turning left and running through an entrance to another corridor; the moment Meeryn jogged inside, the entire foundation of the building rocked and she was thrown to her knees.

"What the heck?!" she squealed, looking up just in time to see the distant silhouette of a man being crushed under huge piles of debris that blocked the entire hall; a deafening roar thundered in Meeryn's ears, forcing the girl into clamping her hands over them. Once the dust settled and the dragon was gone again, the girl slowly crawled to her feet and looked at the barred corridor with dismayed eyes.

Her companion got up as well and trotted over to the collapsed stone; he eyed it up and down with a cocked eyebrow.

"Damn," Ralof whistled, eying the impassable area with amazed eyes. "That dragon doesn't give up easy."

"Uh, yeah… I kind of noticed," Meeryn deadpanned, rolling her eyes before looking around; a loud voice coming from the door made her jump nearly a foot in the air, and she immediately covered her mouth with both hands to keep from letting out a shriek.

"We need to get out of here, so grab everything you can!" the speaker in the room barked loudly, making Ralof shake his head before drawing his sword yet again; Meeryn watched with unhappy eyes as the man stealthily crept into the room before following him.

"I just need to gather some more potions!" another, almost British-sounding voice protested. "Please, give me more time, master!"

"A Pox on the Empire!" Ralof boomed, charging forward and raising his sword high.

"Yeah!" Meeryn added in her pathetic soprano squeak, mocking the man by flailing her arms around. "What _he_ said!"

"Stormcloaks!" the armored man exclaimed, hastily drawing his sword; before he could react, Ralof was on top of him. Meeryn's eyes went wide when he deflected an attack and slit the man's throat in a spray of blood before turning on the younger soldier; his brown eyes went wide and he fumbled for the dagger at his belt even though he was obviously terrified. Meeryn was about to step forward and reason with him when Ralof whipped his blade forward and cut his throat as well. The boy choked and then collapsed, clutching his neck even as blood began spewing from his artery. Meeryn swallowed when the man turned to look at her with a raised eyebrow.

"Are you coming or not, small one?" he inquired in a monotone, making the girl shiver.

_How many people did he have to kill in order not to feel anything for the two men he just slaughtered? _Meeryn wondered in horror, hefting her backpack and jogging after him a little more carefully. _I don't know where the heck I am, but I'm liking it less and less._

"A storeroom?" Ralof suddenly exclaimed, looking around at the barrels that filled the room before shrugging and walking around the corner with a disinterested air around him. "See if you can find any potions, little lass: we'll need them later on, especially if your powers are being stimulated by Magicka as well as emotion. It doesn't yet seem like that's the case, but better to be safe than sorry."

"Uh, okay?" Meeryn called, not knowing what the heck he was talking about. "Potions? Sheesh, this is like a video game."

_Skyrim,_ the little voice inside her mind nagged, making her go still.

"The Librarian gave me a Skyrim game the other day," she whispered, feeling dizzy with shock. "Oh, god… I… I think I still have it in my backpack! Maybe if I read the manual, I might have a general idea on what the hell I'm supposed to be doing around here!"

With her hope renewed, Meeryn slipped off her bag and unzipped the main compartment: after rummaging around for a few moments and pushing her casual clothes aside, she managed to pull out the Skyrim case and opened it with shaking hands. However, she was slightly disappointed when she opened the table of contents since there didn't seem to be anything about the history of Skyrim in it.

However, there were a few sections that caught her interest and she eagerly flipped over to them.

"Umm… okay," she murmured, looking at the page intently. "Well… this part might actually be useful if it's accurate. '_Successfully casting spells_' or in other words, using these freaky powers that I somehow contracted like a disease, '_will raise your skill in that spell's school. You can buy new spells from vendors or learn tem from spell tomes you find in the world._' Wait, didn't I get those freaky powers after reading those books? Could I really be using magic, or is this some sort of genetic thing? It feels natural."

After a moment, she found something else that sparked her interest: something called a Shout.

_Didn't that imperial guy say something about that Stormcloak guy using his voice to kill the king? _Meeryn wondered, eyes widening in shock as a thought of outrageous proportions slammed into her mind. _No way… does this mean I'm going to learn this, too? Or, if I _was_ really sent into a video game, am I even the main character? Wow… I'm stupid, so never mind: this is no video game. It has to be some sort of alternate reality or something… but, if that's the case, where the hell am __**I**__ supposed to fit in with all of this creepy stuff?_

She couldn't answer her own questions, so she decided to shut her brain up and read some more.

"Wow," Meeryn mumbled, leaning forward over the pamphlet. "It says… '_shouts are special combinations of dragon language that produce powerful effects. Hold down the 'R2' button to use an equipped shout._' So, does that mean all I have to do when I learn how to use this power is take a deep breath? I mean, there's no 'R2' button anywhere I can see. '_The longer you hold the button down, the more words of a shout are used, and the more powerful the shout becomes. You can only have one shout equipped.' _Hmm…_"_

Meeryn looked up and thoughtfully stared off into space, trying to figure out how this would work in real life. She wasn't getting any good ideas or rationalizations, so she shrugged it off and flipped to another page of interest. She was just about to skip past the maps and fast travel when a certain name caught her attention: at the very bottom of the page was Helgen, the city she was trapped in.

"No way," the girl whispered, eyes going wide. "Oh, dear… I really am in a video game world; somehow this place is _real_."

She hastily flipped the page and ignored the character creation information: she wasn't a character, so there was no need. However, she DID look at the bartering section since she figured it would be a good idea to have a general image of how trade worked in the world she had found herself in. For all she knew, these people could have used rocks for currency and dead leaves for change.

Sadly, there was no information on how the trading might have worked aside from what buttons you were supposed to push. After a moment, she started feeling sick and finished up reading about the three different types of potions before putting the game and manual back in her backpack. Once she was on her feet, she tiptoed over to the nearest barrel and peered inside of it: four small bottles full of different colored liquids peeked back at her from the bottom, stacked uncaringly… almost as though they were of little importance.

After pulling her backpack off again and sliding them in the smaller compartments, the tiny girl made her way over to the sacks resting underneath the ancient and moldy-looking wooden shelves. In one she found rotten tomatoes, in the other she found flour, and in the third she found three green apples that looked fit enough to eat: her stomach rumbled, letting her know that she'd missed lunch.

"God, why didn't I eat a bigger breakfast?" Meeryn whined, putting one of the apples in her backpack before chowing down; she glanced at Ralof to see that he was looking around the room and searching for useful items as well, but the redhead merely munched on her apple and walked over to the nearby desk before swiping the bottle full of dark red liquid and putting it in her pack. "Ugh… I don't have much room left in my backpack. This could be a problem since I need everything, and I still have to do my homework!"

"What are you grumbling about?" Ralof inquired, looking up from the barrel he was rummaging around in.

"Nothing," the girl sighed, rolling her eyes before she tossed him one of the apples. "Here… I thought you might be hungry."

"Thank you," the man grunted, taking a big bite before he glanced at her bulging bag. "Are you done? If so, let's get moving again."

"Yeah, I agree," the girl mumbled around a mouthful of apple, watching with worried eyes as he opened the door. "Let's get the heck out of here, but you can go ahead and take care of any bad guys while I have lunch and follow you around."

"You really are an odd girl," Ralof snorted, staring her as though she'd somehow grown another head that had called him 'Mama before rolling his eyes and heading down another hall. Meeryn shrugged in a nonchalant manner before she followed him at an easy pace down a set of stone steps. However, when the two of them turned to head down a very steep set of stairs, the man halted.

"Troll's blood!" Ralof hissed, eyebrows shooting up in shock. "It's a torture room!"

"A _what_?" Meeryn mumbled around her apple, eyes going wide with fright. "Um, I'm sorry, but… I'm not good with blood."

"Stop it!" a woman cried angrily, letting out a whine as an electrical noise filled the air. "No! Mercy! I cannot best you!"

"Hear that?" Ralof asked in a low voice, hefting his blade and stealthily making way down the stairs.

"Leave her alone!" another man roared, and the sound of metal on metal ensued; Meeryn nearly choked when a raw-throated scream split the air a few moments later, but the sound of a woman's scream set her feet in motion. Throwing the apple away, she sprinted past Ralof and skidded around the corner… only to crash right into a man wearing red armor; he instantly grabbed her by the throat.

"What do we have here?" he asked in a twisted tone, eying her slender body up and down before touching her full lips. "Are you another little mouse who somehow lost her way in my dungeon of torture? Well, if that's the case, then let me make you feel welcome like our pretty Nord flower being chained over there: she'll start enjoying her torture after a few minutes, and hopefully, so will you."

_What the hell did I just walk into?_ Meeryn wondered, eyes going wide.


	5. Chapter 4: Svena and Spiders

**Chapter Four: Svena and Spiders**

"You… bastards!" the blonde woman wailed, tears streaming from her eyes as she was tied to one of the cages and another man began stripping her of her armor; Meeryn's eyes widened in horror and she tried to pull away, but the man clutched her throat and squeezed so tightly that she was practically lifted off the ground by his grip alone. She flailed around, face turning red as he leered at her body.

"Yes… you will do nicely," he snickered, reaching for the front of her blazer; the redhead squeezed her eyes shut as fearful anger erupted inside her stomach, and with a strangled shriek she slapped the man in the face with both hands and held them there as her new powers exploded into the air.

He immediately began to scream as her touch burned his face; then he let her go and dropped his sword in an attempt to rub his burning eyes and cheeks. The redhead immediately drew her fists back, focusing all her anger and fear and channeling that raw emotional power into her hands: then, thrusting her fists forward, she threw her electrically-charged fireballs at the man who had attacked her before sprinting towards the other man and kicking him 'where the sun don't shine.'

The two men immediately collapsed: one unconscious with half his face burned off, and the other rolling around in mortal agony.

"Help me!" the Nord woman cried; Meeryn instantly bolted over to her and untied her wrists from the cage. After she'd helped the woman up, she turned to start looking around for Ralof, but she was startled when the woman picked her up from behind and swung her around in a circle before hugging her close. "Thank you, child… those vile imperials would have done terrible things to me."

"Um, Miss, I just tried to do what everyone should if they hear or see someone in trouble," Meeryn squeaked, feeling as though the life were being squeezed out of her body by the woman's arms. "No offense… but could, like, not hug so hard? I can't breathe."

"Oh, my apologies," the blonde woman murmured, instantly putting her back down on the ground. "My name is Svena. You?"

"Meeryn," the redhead replied, looking around for Ralof; he came out with his sword sheathed when she frowned in worry. "Ralof, where were you?! I thought that jerk was going to cut my throat or something, you big oaf! Why didn't you help the two of us?!"

"I wanted to see if you would follow through with your irrational actions," the Nord bluntly retorted. "You did fairly well."

"You were watching the entire time?" Svena asked, frowning before folding her arms and pursing her lips. "You're a cruel man."

"Wait a moment, there's something in that cage," Ralof suddenly muttered, completely ignoring her statement and acting completely oblivious when the woman scowled at him with narrowed eyes; he jogged over to it and tried to turn the handle. "Ah, dammit… it's locked and I'm out of picks. Woman, do you have any lockpicks on you? I want to see if I can jiggle this thing open."

"I have a few," Svena muttered, cocking her hip, "but that doesn't mean I'll share with you."

"What about with me?" Meeryn asked, timidly raising her hand when something caught her eye: there was another black book lying beside the corpse inside the cage, and she was getting a strange feeling from simply looking at it. "I want that book in there…"

"Well, perhaps I can share with you two, then," Svena murmured a little more politely, fishing out a few picks and handing them to the girl; Meeryn stared at them stupidly before looking at the lock and examining it with confused yellow eyes. "Something wrong?"

"Yeah," Meeryn stated simply, cocking her head to the side. "I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to do right now."

Ralof and Svena stared at her before their mouths began twitching with barely restrained laughter.

"Let me take over, then," the Nord man chuckled, taking two of the picks and gently bumping her out of the way; Meeryn stepped back a few feet, but she kept her eyes trained on his fingers and watched how he moved them around. After a moment, there was a click and Ralof pulled the door open before stepping aside and making a gentlemanly flourish. "Ladies first?"

"Don't try acting cute," Svena sighed, folding her arms when Meeryn bolted over to the book and picked it up; after taking a deep breath and preparing herself for more pain, the girl opened the cover and prepared to read the words aloud… but instead of words, what she got instead were images and knowledge that sped right into her brain. She blinked several times as a light flashed behind her eyes, and when it faded away she somehow knew the correct way to channel her electrical powers through her fingers to heal herself.

"Whoa…" she stated in a low voice, swaying a little and pressing a hand to her head. "Talk about a major cram session! Wow!"

"What do you mean?" Svena asked, unfolding her arms when Meeryn continued blinking at nothing.

"I mean, a bunch of images and pictures just popped into my head," the girl explained, glancing at the woman in awe. "Somehow, I know how to do a lot of stuff that I didn't only two minutes ago. Wait… is that… gold?! Holy crap! Gold coins! Look, look, look!"

"Is she a mage?" Svena whispered to Ralof, staring at Meeryn with raised eyebrows.

"No idea, but if so then she's unlike any mage I've ever seen," the man grunted back, watching as the small girl's dazed demeanor faded when she saw the coins on the floor. Meeryn squealed in total delight before kneeling down and examining them with a huge smile and probing eyes. After a few moments, she happily scooped up all the coins she could see and made her way out of the cage.

"We might need those coins for later," Ralof muttered, eyeing the pouch Meeryn put them in.

"I'll split it evenly when we get out of here," the redhead promised, hefting her backpack with a groan. "Now, are we ready?"

"Well, what else are we waiting for?" Svena asked, bouncing nervously from foot to foot. "Let's get going!"

"Okay!" Meeryn called, bouncing after Ralof when he took off at an easy jog once again; Svena eyed the pair with raised eyebrows for a moment before she shook her head with a surprised expression and followed them into the next corridor. "Hey… is it just me, or is this place more like a maze of moldy hallways than an actual castle? Because I really think it's more of a maze… am I right?"

"No," Ralof scoffed, shooting her a peeved look as they began to pass the jail cells; Meeryn glanced back and forth between cells, but she jumped and let out a hysterical shriek when she saw a skeleton lying in the far corner of one particular cell.

"EEEEK! It's a skeleton!" she wailed, jumping up and down in horror before she took off and practically flew past Ralof; the man irritably grabbed her backpack and kept her from going any father."No! Let me go! What if that thing starts moving or something?!"

"It's dead," the man stated in a low voice, "and unless you want to join it, I suggest you calm down."

"Huh?" Meeryn whispered, glancing over her shoulder and looking at his cold blue eyes; she immediately shivered, because he looked dead serious and his face was actually kind of frightening. "Okay… sorry."

"Sheesh, you really aren't popular with the ladies," Svena muttered, sweeping past him and walking off down the stairs; not even a second after she was out of sight, a bloodcurdling screech made the girl _and_ the man jump nearly a foot in the air. However, when they darted downstairs, they didn't find a skeleton walking around; they saw rotting corpses dangling in overly small cages, tables that held the remains of what used to be human arms and legs, bloody saws, spiked coffins, and a multitude of Skeletons piled in a corner.

"Now this," Ralof muttered, nose wrinkling in disgust, "this is something a woman could scream about, by all rights."

"Let's get the hell out of here," Meeryn whined, clutching her head with both hands and burying her head in her knees. "I've seen too many terrible things today, and I don't think I can take anymore. I'm starting to feel sick to my stomach, not counting my heart hurts."

"Your heart?" Svena asked in a shaken tone.

"I've never seen anyone die until today," Meeryn whispered with a violent shiver, eyes going blank as she swallowed. "It… it was…"

"Sickening," Ralof finished, hoisting her upright and dragging her towards a hole in the wall that led to a cave of sorts. "I understand."

Meeryn snorted in disbelief, but when a breeze lifted her bangs out of her eyes, she froze and slowly looked at the exit: she didn't know why, but she had a really bad feeling in her gut about the tunnel. Still, she allowed Ralof to drag her down the incline; the girl was surprised when he slipped and had to jump the rest of the way, but he at least had the decency to let go of her before doing so.

She would have broken her wrist otherwise, which would have been a real problem. The three of them continued on into the cave, keeping quiet and listening to the sound of flowing water become louder; an unexpected set of voices forced them all into stopping.

"The orders are to wait until General Tullius arrives," a man thundered. "Have faith in the general!"

"I'm not waiting to be killed by a dragon!" another man shouted angrily in response. "We need to fall back!"

"Just give the general some time," the first voice retorted.

"For Ulfric and Skyrim!" Ralof suddenly bellowed, drawing his sword and charging around the bend in the cave.

"For Talos!" Svena screeched, drawing her own weapon and letting out a fierce war cry before following him.

"For survival!" Meeryn wailed in fright, ducking her head and high-tailing it past the ensuing fight; she sprinted across a cobblestone bridge and darted past the torches before skidding a little and running across another bridge. However, only a second before she made it to the edge, three men wearing red armor ran up the stairs that lay right next to the safety of the landing. Meeryn skidded to a halt, but her shoes slipped on the wet stone and she landed on her butt; an arrow sliced through the air right where she had been standing.

"Get her!" one of them men wielding a sword bellowed, and the man in front of him notched another arrow.

"Leave me alone!" Meeryn shrieked, lifting her palms and thrusting them out in protest; two forked lightning bolts unintentionally exploded from her palms and struck the three men with a deafening clap of thunder that echoed through the mossy cavern. The redhead's eyes widened in shock and she let out squeak before looking at her hands in horror. "I didn't mean to do that! I'm sorry!"

"Don't apologize!" Ralof barked, disarming the man he was fighting with before running him through; Svena was similarly locked in a battle with one of the red-clad men, and her face showed no emotion whatsoever as she decapitated her assailant;"They cannot and will not show you the same mercy, child! Hurry up and wait for us at the entrance at the end of this tunnel! We will catch up!"

"How _can_ I without getting myself killed?!" Meeryn shrieked back, pointing an accusing finger at the entrance in question. "There are more bad people coming through there, if you hadn't noticed, and I'm not going to kill anyone!"

"Die, wench!" a red-clad man snarled, and Meeryn let out a yelp when a blade was swung at her from behind; she immediately ducked under the blow, but the man's sword tip caught the ends of her hair and cut off a good half inch. Meeryn's eyes went blank as she examined the end of her braid, and with fire in her eyes she angrily lifted her hands as her golden eyes rippled with bright blue light.

"That was a stupid move," Meeryn hissed, clenching her fists as they caught fire; then, with an enraged shriek, the tiny girl charged at the man and started fighting with him. She threw a flaming kick here, a flaming punch there, and eventually disarmed the soldier using the awesome Martial Arts techniques her three fathers had taught her; on top of that, she had been a Karate prodigy in middle school.

"Have mercy!" the man cried, crawling away from the girl on his backside.

"Never touch a woman's hair," Meeryn hissed, whipping around and sending the heel of her dress shoe straight into his temple; he collapsed like an empty sack and she proudly dusted off her rumpled blazer before examining her braid once again. "It's not too bad… I needed to trim my split ends anyway. I just wasn't expecting to have them trimmed by a sword."

"You fight better in hand to hand combat than you originally claimed," Ralof wheezed, jogging up to her once their enemies were either unconscious or dead. "I don't believe I've ever seen someone fight so gracefully using their fists."

"It was a combination of Jujitsu, Judo, and Karate," Meeryn explained, tucking her braid beneath her backpack so there wouldn't be any more problems with idiots cutting her hair by accident. "In case you don't know, they're fighting styles from my… er, homeland."

"Would you mind teaching me how to fight like that?" Svena eagerly asked, looking down at her with her chest heaving from the exertion after she finally caught up with them; Meeryn was starting to take a liking to Nord accents since they reminded her of Tobias. "Knowing how to fight without a weapon might actually be useful if I'm caught in another tricky situation."

"Sure, but let's wait until we get out of here," Meeryn uneasily acknowledged, smiling up at the big-boned woman before she turned and jogged up the crumbling stairs into the next stone tunnel. Her two Nord companions followed her, but when the girl stopped in front of a wooden dead end and saw no way around it, she let out a sigh of dismay. "It looks like we're stuck here."

A muffled roar suddenly shook the tunnel they were standing in; streams of dust drifted down from the ceiling.

"Do you even know what you're looking at?" Ralof demanded, gazing at her in dismay. "That's a drawbridge, not a wall."

"A drawbridge?" Meeryn asked, staring at the wood with perplexed eyes; so saying, the man walked over to a long wooden pole sticking out of the ground and jerked on it; Meeryn squeaked and leapt back from the wooden barricade when it jolted and fell away from her, creaking down at a fast pace until it slammed onto the edge of another stone floor. "Oh. Well, that was… interesting?"

"You are an odd girl," Svena murmured, shaking her head in mild surprise.

"I've been getting that a lot," Meeryn snorted, eyeing the huge woman up and down, "but did it ever occur to you that it might be the other way around for _me?_ Because the way I see it, I've ended up in a place where everyone _except _me is odd."

"Fair enough," Svena chuckled, clapping the girl on the shoulder before moving across the bridge. "It takes two to have an argument."

"Stop talking and get a move on," Ralof grunted, nudging Meeryn forward; the girl shot a half-hearted glare at him before timidly stepping across the wood and tip-toeing over the chasm beneath the bridge. "That's a good girl: keep going."

"I'm not a dog," the redhead snapped, feeling a little irritated about how the man was treating her; she had just made it to the end of the bridge and had stepped down the first two stairs when another distant roar shook the tunnels. However, Meeryn lost her balance when the cobblestone floor bucked beneath her feet and the tremors grew in intensity; her eyes widened and she glanced over her shoulder when the deafening sound of a cave-in erupted from behind them. The bridge she had just been walking on not even ten seconds ago was gone in a spray of wood and stone that soon vanished completely, leaving behind clouds of thick dust and debris.

"No going back that way, now," Ralof noted, eying the demolished bridge. "We got lucky."

"You _think?!"_ Meeryn snapped, looking at him with horror in her eyes. "We were just on there! That could have been us!"

"It wasn't, though, and we're alive," Svena pointed out with a grin; she was obviously starting to take a liking to Meeryn.

"We'd better push on," Ralof muttered, cracking his neck once again. "The rest of them will have to find another way out."

"If there is another way," Meeryn muttered, flicking her hair out of her eyes before she trotted down another small set of stairs and landed on dark mud; the girl's mouth instantly curled in disgust and she shuddered as her dress shoes sank down a bit. "Ew… gross."

"A little mud and water never hurt anybody," Svena chuckled, clomping through the mud before heading over to the stream and walking through it, boots and all. "In fact, I'd say it refreshes the soul and makes a person feel more alive."

"You're crazy," the redhead muttered inaudibly, bending down and undoing her laces before taking off her shoes and stockings; with deft movements, the girl slipped her backpack off and put the articles of clothing inside before she continued on in the stream, since her companions didn't seem to care if they got their boots wet. Luckily enough, Meeryn hadn't exactly been a 'mega-slut' back in New York and she'd had a preference for the standard, old-fashioned knee-length skirts that had been out magazines for a long time. Which basically meant that her clothes would stay dry if she was careful.

Meeryn followed the two Nords downstream, being careful not to slip or cut her bare feet on the rocks beneath the water, until they came to a halt in front of another cave-in. The two of them looked rather perplexed, but after a moment Ralof looked down at the natural cavern shooting off to the right with an expression of immense distaste.

He was obviously reluctant to head down the open cavern.

"The quick exit is blocked," he muttered, glancing down at Meeryn with narrowed eyes. "Let's try heading down this path."

Meeryn happened to notice a bunch of bones resting in a neat little pile next to a lantern, along with a pouch of coins.

"You mean the creepy one with the bones on the floor?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow. "Yay… sounds like another scream fest."

"Well, a little gold never hurt anyone, and my blade will take care of any problems," Svena chuckled, filching the pouch from the shelf full of bones and clasping it onto her belt. "Regardless, we have to keep moving: there's another way out through there."

"If you say so, I'll trust you," Meeryn stated quietly, shyly averting her eyes. "However… I… I'm scared right now, and I was wondering if it would be okay if I held your hand? I really need something to squeeze if we do happen to see something scary."

"You're just a child, aren't you?" Svena asked, raising her eyebrows in surprise; when Meeryn indignantly shook her head, the woman laughed and held out her hand with a smile. "I was just teasing you, Little Cub: you may be young, but you fight like a true Nord."

"Um, thanks?" the redhead mumbled uncertainly, taking the woman's hand before following Ralof down the natural cavern and making their way over the rocks and crags; Meeryn squeaked when her bare foot slipped on a stone, but Svena easily caught her and held her up. "Ow! I skinned my foot! Ow... oh! Thanks for keeping me on my feet, Miss Svena!"

"You're welcome," the woman sighed, rolling her eyes as she set the girl down and continued on.

"I don't think this day is ever going to end," Ralof sighed, staring mournfully up at the ceiling and drawing his sword when they came to an opening in the cavern. Meeryn looked up to see a bunch of plant life and roots surrounding her, but when one of the plants actually moved and turned to face them, the girl let out a screech that was muffled by Svena's large hand. Regardless of the appendage covering her mouth, Meeryn continued to scream and fought like a wild animal to get away.

"Shh!" Svena hissed, pulling her back as Ralof crept forward. "Don't provoke them!"

Meeryn began to cry as her screams were muffled, yellow eyes becoming huge behind the sweep of her auburn bangs.

You see, the tiny girl had an ingrained dread of creepy-crawlies—she _was_ a girl, after all—but amongst all of those fears, the biggest was her fear of spiders. In the beginning, she had actually liked tiny little spiders because the majority of them were harmless… but then, on a trip to South Carolina with her six parents, she was bitten by a poisonous arachnid that had laid eggs in her skin. She hadn't ever gotten over the trauma of waking up one morning to a mountain of eight-legged bugs exploding from a bloody hole in her skin. However, the spiders in front of her weren't the size of a grape or a penny.

_These_ spiders were enormous: the smallest of them was the size of a small car.

So, like any rational girl with a deep-set fear of spiders, she was freaking the fuck out.

"Shhh!" Svena whimpered, eyes going wide when more spiders dropped down out of the ceiling. "Shor's blood! We have to move!"

"Disgusting!" Ralof muttered, cleaving his way through the insects and jumping back. "Let's just get this over with!"

"I'M NOT GONNA LET ONE OF THOSE SPIDERS BITE ME!" Meeryn screeched, falling to her knees and covering her ears in terror as she began to wail. "SOMEONE, HELP ME! SOMEONE, PLEASE, MAKE THEM ALL GO AWAY! MAKE THEM GO AWAY!"

Svena backed away from Meeryn when the tiny girl's entire body began to glow: the woman's eyes widened in shock when her long auburn hair lifted away from her back and swirled around her torso in gleaming curls as she screamed incoherent pleas for the spiders to vanish and disappear. Ralof cleaved another chittering arachnid in two before glancing at her, but his blue eyes widened as well and he stared at her stupidly. A set of gorgeous white wings unexpectedly exploded from her back in a spray of cloth and blinding yellow sparkles, shredding her clothing and making two huge slits in the girl's school clothes.

Without warning, the spiders were crushed by an explosion of roots: they ripped up from the earth with sprays of dirt, mud, and stone before wrapping around the insects and dragging them back down into the ground with sickening squelches. Ralof blinked rapidly at the disappearing arachnids before glancing at Meeryn: her were glowing with bright blue light and her wings were somehow dissolving into sparkles, leaving behind nothing but two long slits in her clothes. The girl continued crying even after the spiders were dead, shaking violently with her face buried in her hands: Svena nervously bit her lip.

"They're dead," Svena sighed, gripping her arm and pulling the shaken girl to her feet. "Don't worry, Cub, they're gone."

"Hate those damn things," Ralof muttered, eyeing the slits in Meeryn's clothing when she and Svena passed him. "Too many eyes, you know?"

"Biggest damn spiders I've ever seen," Svena retorted, glancing over her shoulder at the burly man; five minutes later they came to another river and hesitantly crossed the natural stone bridge leading to the other side. The three of them were just about to pass an old, abandoned wagon when Ralof froze and crouched down.

Svena gripped Meeryn's arm and forced her to do the same out of instinct.

"Hold up," Ralof hissed, looking at the two females over his shoulder. "There's a bear just ahead! See her?"

"How could I not see that incredible beast?" Svena whispered back, silently drawing her sword and eying the sleeping lump of fur lying across another natural stone river-crossing. "It's the size of a wagon! The wildlife around here isn't normal!"

A very distant roar and the dull thundering of a collapsing tunnel behind them seemed to agree with the woman's statement.

"I'd rather not tangle with her right now," Ralof muttered, looking at the two women. "Let's try to sneak by… take it nice and slow, and watch where you step. Or, if you're feeling lucky, you can take the bow I found earlier. Might take her by surprise."

"Are you kidding with me?!" Meeryn hissed, frantically shaking her head. "I don't even know how to _use_ a bow, let alone take out a bear the size of a minivan! I'm _not_ feeling lucky, and I'd prefer it if we could just sneak by that freaky thing!"

"I'm inclined to agree," Svena murmured, looking at the bear with pressed lips. "I highly doubt I could best that animal."

"Then let's go," Ralof whispered, rolling his eyes. "You girls go first; I'll watch your back."

The next few minutes were spent sneaking past the sleeping bear without slipping and falling on the unsteady ground. Meeryn's heart was thudding in her throat, and her palms were shaking as she tried to sneak past the animal with stealthy movements… however, her heart leapt into her mouth when the beast suddenly lifted its head and looked around. The redhead froze like a statue and squeezed her yellow eyes shut, already feeling lightheaded with the involuntary scream she was constantly holding back: this place was too much. When the creature lay back down and snuffled a bit, she all but scurried towards the safety of sheltering rocks.

"Whew, that was close," Ralof stated in a mocking fashion, making a show of wiping his forehead before he smirked at the two frightened women; Meeryn flipped him off, a gesture which he found completely unfamiliar, and Svena merely glared at him with an irritated expression on her face. However, when the three of them walked down the edge of the cavern, his next words nearly made Meeryn cry with joy. "That looks like the way out! I knew we'd make it! Come on, Lassies, let's get out of this twisted labyrinth!"

"Finally!" Svena cheered, gently taking Meeryn's small hand in her own before the two of them made their way into the light.

_Welcome home, Dovahkiin Kulaas,_ the voice inside the redhead's mind whispered. _Hopefully_ _we will meet in person someday. _

"_Dovakhiin Kulaas_?" Meeryn whispered, closing her eyes as she disappeared into the light with Svena. "Who… am I?"

The question lingered in her mind a lot longer than she would have hoped.


	6. Chapter 5: The Trek to Riverwood

**Chapter Five: The Trek to Riverwood**

When Meeryn's eyes had adjusted to the light, her mouth dropped open in shock and her breath hitched. For a moment, she simply gaped at the gorgeous landscape around her, from the snow-encrusted pines to the glistening mountains that stretched endlessly into the distance. She squeezed Svena's hand as her knees wobbled, and with hesitant motions she gazed up at the sky.

_Sing of your Return,** Dovahkiin Kulaas**,_ the fading voice whispered, _and_ _sing the song resounding inside your soul._

Unbidden, a tune sprang to Meeryn's lips and only a moment later, her eyes rippled with blue light.

"_Our hero, our hero, claims a warrior's heart,_" she sang softly, catching the attention of the two Nords like the snap of a whip; her small hand slowly slid from Svena's as she stepped forward and stared at the sky. _"I tell you, I tell you… the Dragonborn comes. For the darkness has passed… and the legend yet grows. You'll know, you'll know… the Dragonborn comes. It's an end to the evil of all Skyrim's foes; believe, believe the Dragonborn comes…"_

"It can't be…" Svena whispered, eyes slowly widening as Ralof's face went slack. "She can't be the…"

"It's not possible!" Ralof scoffed, face slowly draining of color. "Legends or not, this girl just can't be the…"

However, when Meeryn lifted her arms and smiled at the sky, the clouds parted and she was bathed in sunlight.

The Nords stared with gaping mouths, remembering that the prophecy had foretold of this very scene: '_the dark sky will sunder to the four winds and the star of life shall wash over Skyrim's savior, bathing him in Godly radiance._'

"_Together through Snowfall and sorrow we'll stride,_" Meeryn sang loudly, bringing her left hand up to her chest and outstretching the other; her high-pitched voice immediately began to echo through the mountains, ringing into the distance and making birds fall silent all over the place as she gazed at the clouds. "_For now and on, the Dragonborn flies… until we may sleep under Sovengarde's Skies! The Dragonborn, Dragonborn, Dragonborn comes!"_

"This is impossible, it has to be a farce of some sort," Ralof hissed, clapping a hand to his head before he sank to his knees in dismay. "The Dragonborn is a _woman!_ Not _even_ a woman! She's nothing more than a simple _child_!"

_Correct him, __**Dovahkiin**__, and recite these words before I leave,_ the voice whispered inside her head. '**_Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin, naal ek zin los vahriin… wah dein vokul mahfaeraak ahst vaal, ahrk fin norok paal graa, fod nust hon zindro zaan. Dovahkiin, fah hin kogaan mu draal.'_**_ You are the Dragonborn: never let anyone say otherwise._

_"_'**Dragonborn, Dragonborn, by her honor is sworn**,'" Meeryn monotonously recited, turning to look at Ralof with glowing blue eyes and a face that was completely devoid of emotion, "**to keep evil forever at bay, the fiercest of foes rout when they hear her triumphant Shout. Dragonborn, for your blessing we pray.'**"

Ralof was about to open his mouth to yell at her when the sound of thunderous wing-flaps made everyone freeze.

"Wait!" the man hissed, looking up before bolting towards the cover of a low rock; Svena gripped Meeryn's arms and literally dragged the girl over to the stone as well before huddling down and holding her close. The redhead's mind cleared up the moment she was pulled against the woman's armor, and she blinked as though waking up from a dream before glancing around in confusion. She had no idea what had just happened to her a few seconds prior.

However, a deafening roar nearly made the poor girl bite her tongue off by accident.

"What the hell?!" she squealed, pressing backwards into Svena's chest when the black dragon flew overhead and disappeared past a few tall pine trees; another roar signified that it was moving farther away from them. Still, that didn't stop the girl's heart from pounding as the creature flew away into the distance.

"There he goes," Ralof muttered, shaking his head before he glanced at Meeryn's clothes again. "Looks like he's gone for good this time. There's no way to know if anyone else made it out alive, but this place is going to be swarming with imperials soon enough. The three of us had better clear out of here."

"You're right," Svena stated, nodding twice before gently pulling Meeryn to her feet. "I need to send word to my twin sister Mjoll to let her know of what happened to me. She'll never believe it unless I send word of the truth."

"You have a twin sister?" Meeryn asked, eyebrows lifting in dazed surprise as she hefted her backpack.

"Yes, Little Cub, we are identical in every way aside from clothing and armor preferences," Svena chuckled, rolling her eyes before she clapped the girl on the back and started walking down the dirt path. "Last time I heard from her, she was planning on heading into some Dwemer ruins she discovered a while ago; hopefully she made it ."

"Dwemer ruins?" Meeryn asked, trotting to keep up with the woman's long legs while simultaneously gawking at their beautiful surroundings; the very air was alive with the sound of crickets, birds, and animals. "What are they?"

"Places that the dwarves left behind when they all vanished some millennia ago, I guess," Svena admitted with a confused shrug and a sheepish glance. "Sorry, but I don't know very much about them _or_ their strange machines."

"Dwarves?" the redhead gasped, instantly bouncing forward and whipping around so she could walk backwards; she often did this when she was walking with someone, simply so she could look at them while they talked. "How many races are around this part of this world?! Elves, dwarves…? Are there things like fairies and vampires, too?"

"Aye," Svena stated with an expression of mild surprise, "and werewolves, and Daedra, and the overly beautiful winged folk, and who knows what else. There are a lot of creatures and races out here, Little Cub… but, if you don't mind me asking, where exactly are you from if you don't know about elves? Thalmor are everywhere these days."

"Th… Thalmor?" Meeryn asked, gawping in total confusion. "I'm sorry, but I must have come from someplace that's very far away from here, since none of this is ringing any bells…"

"You lost the majority of your memories when the imperials attacked, didn't you?" Ralof suddenly asked, catching the tiny girl by surprise and making her spin around. "I had a feeling that's what might have happened… you know absolutely nothing about this world because you don't remember it… what a terrible situation to put someone in."

Meeryn could have kissed him for giving her a decent and plausible excuse to use.

"You caught me," she sighed, attempting to look deflated by letting her arms sag and her head hang. "I can't remember anything aside from my name, my age, and bits and pieces of the people I used to know. Everything else is totally blank, and I don't know what to do about it anymore. Sorry for trying to hide it from you guys for so long."

"Oh, little one," Svena sighed, mussing up her hair. "You should have said something sooner."

"My sister, Gerdur, runs the mill in Riverwood up ahead, just up the road," Ralof stated in a much thicker accent than usual, slowly glancing at the two women over his shoulder. "I'm sure she'd help you both. However, it's probably best if we split up from here: good luck, Little Meeryn… I wouldn't have made it out without your help."

"Wait!" Meeryn squeaked, whipping around a second time when the man re-laced his boots. "You're leaving us?!"

"Yes," the man grunted, cracking his thick neck before smirking and taking off down the road at a trot.

"WAIT!" Meeryn wailed, jumping up and down in horror as a surge of abandonment swept through her. When the man disappeared around a long bend in the road, her outstretched hand dropped and tears began trickling down her face. For some reason, she had a horrid feeling that she had just been used by a man she had really begun to like… and the very fact that he had only been thinking of himself when she had been thinking of everyone made the poor girl feel like she'd been kicked in the stomach. Meeryn struggled to wipe her streaming yellow eyes, but for some reason the tears wouldn't stop. It was almost as though her tension and fear were leaving through her eyes.

However, she was startled when Svena gently turned her around and pulled her into a soft hug.

"Don't worry," she murmured soothingly, running a large motherly hand through Meeryn's long hair. "He may have gone on ahead, but I don't think I could leave someone like you all alone out here… especially since you have no memories of the dangers around you. I'll stay by your side as long as you have want of help, little cub."

"P-promise?" Meeryn sniffled, shivering violently as she clung to the woman's armor.

"On the honor of my blade, I pledge to keep you safe," Svena chuckled heartily, pulling away and regarding her large, tear-stained eyes with something close to affection. "You're barely even a woman yet, but somehow you have more courage and honesty about your feelings than me… and that's not something I've seen a lot."

"I'm not brave at all, honestly," Meeryn muttered, rubbing her eyes with a dejected countenance as the air around her fingers slowly began to grow colder with the sadness in her heart. "That was nothing but an adrenaline rush."

"A what?" Svena asked, blinking in surprise.

"I'll explain a little later," Meeryn murmured shyly, timidly taking the woman's hand before glancing around with fearful yellow eyes; now that the adrenaline was wearing off, her fear was spiking up bad. "Where are we going?"

"Well, judging by the mountain ranges and scenery all around us," Svena murmured, looking at the towering monarchs before glancing at the position of the sun and staring at the trail, "I'd say we're heading to Riverwood."

"Riverwood?" Meeryn asked, looking at the woman with curious eyes as they began walking. "Where's that?"

"It's an old village resting about five miles down this path," Svena explained, stepping over a fallen log before lifting Meeryn off the ground and setting her down on the other side of it; the redhead was beginning to notice that having a woman who was so much bigger and stronger than her was starting to feel kind of cool. "Although, it's mostly visited for its lumber trade… there aren't many shops there, and the blacksmith is an average metalworker."

"A blacksmith is someone who makes swords, right?" Meeryn inquired, looking at the clouds above as they headed downhill through the trees. "Swords, jewelry, armor, and lots of other things like mirrors and metal bowls?"

"Correct," Svena confirmed, looking around with observant eyes; it was around that moment that Meeryn realized the woman never took her hand off her sword. It made the redhead a little unnerved, since it most likely meant that this beautiful place was a dangerous place to be walking. "I know a few people from Riverwood, in fact."

"Really?" Meeryn quipped, bouncing over a huge root with a squeak. "Wow, how big are trees around here?!"

"Some get to be as tall as mountains," the Nord woman giggled, rolling her eyes; when a rustling in the bushes caught her attention, she gripped Meeryn's arm and forced the girl to stand behind her. The redhead's eyes widened when Svena drew her sword and held it in front of her with flashing green eyes, looking at the source of the rustling. A rabbit hopped out a second later and lifted its head as it spotted them; then it lazily hopped away.

"Wow," Meeryn whispered, watching it go with raised eyebrows. "It didn't act scared of us!"

"We'd better keep moving," Svena murmured, slowly sheathing her sword. "I don't want to run into any imperials who know what happened at Helgen. That would be bad for the both of us… bloodshed would be unavoidable."

"Um, if you don't mind me asking, I have a few questions that have been really bugging me," Meeryn stammered, awkwardly staring at her dirty little feet. "Um, w-why were your… um, friends going to be executed earlier?"

"Seriously, you don't know?" Svena asked, looking shocked by her question. "That was Ulfric Stormcloak himself!"

"Um, I have no memories, remember?" the tiny girl pointed out, then gestured to her head for emphasis.

"Oh, right," Svena murmured, shaking her head as she fought to get over her immense surprise; after a moment, the woman clasped her hand again and led her down the path. "Still, I'm surprised you haven't heard of Ulfric. He's our leader, Little Cub, the leader of the rebellion for Nord freedom."

"Wait, what exactly do you mean by Nord freedom?" Meeryn asked, feeling just as surprised by her response. "Are you saying that Nords aren't free people around here? Are they slaves like the black people back in Colonial days?"

"No, that's not it," Svena muttered distastefully. "The empire is taking away our freedom to believe in Talos and the rights to our own religion. We're being forced out of cities because the Thalmor and the Empire believe that Talos wasn't fit to be worshiped as the ninth divine… and it was all because he was a man who became a god."

"That's not right," Meeryn muttered, shaking her head as she stepped over a fallen tree branch. "People should be free to do whatever they want, as long as it's not hurting other people and as long as it doesn't interfere with their lives in any sort of direct manner. I hate it when others are persecuted for having different beliefs: it's not fair."

"You're very right, and that's what all us Nords believe," Svena sighed in dismay. "To each, his own."

"Anyway, who are the Stormcloaks?" Meeryn asked, trying to find a way to change the subject. "I've heard that name being thrown around a lot, but I still have no clue as to what's going on around here."

"Surely even a girl with no memories could remember the terrible war going on in Skyrim!" the woman exclaimed, eyebrows shooting up as her mouth dropped open. "The Nords are tired of spending our blood for the Empire's wars, and paying for the empire's decadence with our taxes. Ulfric is our rightful High King: he's leading the fight to drive the Empire out of Skyrim once and for all! That's why our own were being executed back there!"

"Well, how on earth did you guys managed to get caught?" Meeryn squeaked, shaking her head. "If he's the leader of the rebellion, and you're facing an entire country all alone, what good would getting captured do you guys?"

"I was assigned to Ulfric's guard," the woman explained, mouth pulling into a grim frown. "We were on our way to Darkwater Crossing in the south of Eastmarch, but the imperials were waiting for us: it was as pretty of an ambush as I've ever seen. We were outnumbered five to one, at least, but Ulfric ordered us to stop fighting… he didn't want us all to die for nothing, I guess. I managed to slip away before the group was caught, though, and I trailed them from behind with my comrade, Bjorn, who died trying to keep that lecherous Imperial from taking my chastity. "

"What?" Meeryn whispered, clenching her fist in horror. "What happened then?!"

"I thought they were taking my comrades down to Cyrodil to parade them in front of the Emperor," Svena sighed, shaking her head in disgust as they continued to descend down the mountain past a sign; the woman gave it a glance and looked at the ground with a nod when she saw the beginnings of cobblestone. "Then they stopped in Helgen, the dragon attacked, I was captured by that bastard who killed my comrade, and you know the rest."

"I'm sorry…" the redhead whispered, touching her arm with watering eyes. "I wish I had gotten to you sooner."

"It was not your fault that he died, Little One, it was that damned Imperial's fault," Svena soothed, mussing up the small girl's long red hair before she eyed her thigh-length braid with an envious expression. "However, I really think you should join up with the rebellion so we can be sisters-in-arms. You've seen the true face of the Empire today, and there are many people out there who will definitely be put through similar horrors if we don't stop them."

"I… I don't know just yet," Meeryn whispered, rubbing her nose with a shiver. "I don't think I can hurt anyone."

"It's not an easy decision, and I'm well aware that you'll need time to think it over," Svena sighed, patting her shoulder as they walked, "but just in case you ever want to join up and we've happened to have parted ways, go to Windhelm and talk to the Jarl. Tell him that the warrior sisters, Mjoll the Lioness and Svena the Tigress, are your personal guardians and he will let you have an audience. If anyone knows where that dragon came from, it's him."

"You think he knows where the dragon came from?" the redhead asked, glancing up in surprise.

"It's very possible that he does," the woman allowed, sighing a little bit when the girl tripped over a root and fell flat on her face with a squeak of surprise; Svena frowned deeply when she noticed that Meeryn's legs were shaking from everything she'd experienced, but when she saw that the girl was bleeding from a deep cut on her foot, the woman bent down and lifted the teenager into her arms; she completely ignored the resulting squeal of protest.

"W-w-w-what are you doing?!" Meeryn squealed, flailing around a little bit before clamping onto the woman's neck with shaking arms. "I really hate it when people do this to me, especially when they don't give any warning first!"

"I apologize for startling you, but you're bleeding and I don't want your foot to get infected," Svena stated evenly, tickling the top of the girl's red hair with her breath she spoke. "Just relax and let me do the walking for now."

"Okay, but only if you promise not to drop me!" Meeryn whined, looking at the ground. "Ralof wasn't polite when he picked me up, and my backside is _still_ bruising from how hard I landed on it! I don't like being dropped!"

Svena's laugh vibrated her entire body and made her nose itch.

"Little Cub, I personally joined the rebellion because I was once the mother of a beautiful little girl," the woman stated quietly after a moment, taking a deep breath and letting out in a sigh. "The Imperials were once a nation that I thought was there to protect people like us… to keep those who followed every law with the utmost respect. Yet, those same Imperials I had so much faith in attacked my daughter one night and… did terrible things to her."

"What…?" Meeryn whispered, stomach dropping through the floor when something wet dropped on her arm; she immediately pulled back to see that the woman was staring off into space, green eyes faraway as she cried.

"I found her after they'd left," the woman murmured, closing her eyes and coming to a halt. "My baby died crying in my arms because of what those men did to her… and all the while, she told me they said her body was payment for the Empire's lack of entertainment. I'm sorry if you feel I've been acting too protective since we hardly know each other, but you're around the same age as my daughter… and you seem just as naive and innocent as she was."

"S-Svena, I didn't know," the redhead stammered, feeling her tummy tightening up. "I'm so sorry!"

"Don't worry," the woman chuckled, giving her a wink and causing a tear to slide off her glistening lashes. "My daughter was a firm believer in Talos, and I'm sure she's happy living in Sovengarde's halls now. However, I see the potential of a great woman inside you, and on my honor as both a Stormcloak and a Mother, I'll keep you safe."

"Um, thanks…" Meeryn murmured, averting her eyes when her cheeks burned bright red; the woman and the girl became silent after that, since neither of them really knew what to say and speaking seemed sort of awkward. Still, when Svena looked ahead and saw three odd-looking pillars that had been overgrown with roots, she smiled.

"These are the ancient Guardian Stones," the woman explained, gesturing towards the pillars. "Three of the ancient standing stones that dot Skyrim's landscape. Come, little one, let's see which stone calls out to you the most: the stone of the warrior, the stone of the thief, or the stone of the mage. One of them will resound inside of you."

"Uh, the one in the middle is making my entire body vibrate," Meeryn babbled, instantly pointing at the stone in the center of the three; Svena's eyes went wide and she blinked in surprise, since they were actually more than twenty feet away from the stones and they normally affected someone with promise at a measly range of two feet away.

"The mage stone," the Nordic woman murmured, blinking slowly in amazement. "Well, after what I've seen you do using those odd powers of yours, it probably shouldn't surprise me to discover you have a rare talent in magicka."

"Rare?" Meeryn droned, blinking when the woman stepped up to the stone. "Ugh… it's making me tingle all over!"

"Touch it," Svena commanded, nodding at the stone with her head. "Hopefully the gods will grant you a blessing."

"If you say so," the teenager snorted, shivering violently as she stretched out her hand; the moment her fingers touched the stone, an icy sensation swept throughout Meeryn's body and her eyes exploded with white light. At the same moment, the hole that had been carved in the center of the stone began to glow with a hissing noise.

"Shor's blood," Svena whispered, staring at Meeryn's body when it began to glow and somehow became lighter; her eyes widened when the girl's long braid billowed up towards the sky and slowly drifted around with the flow of power emanating from the teenager's body. When a set of ethereal wings exploded from her back, the woman nearly broke her promise and dropped Meeryn to the ground by accident; she blinked in shock. "You're an angel."

"Why do I feel so… odd?" Meeryn whimpered, dizzily going limp in the woman's grasp. "I feel so… loose… free."

"Let go of the stone, now!" Svena rapped out, gripping her hand and pulling the girl away; almost immediately, the godly aura surrounding the redhead's body vanished and she gasped in relief, eyes returning to their former yellow with a twinkling ripple. "You're a very powerful Magicka user… and you're going to need some serious training."

"How do I train myself?" the girl asked in a weak tone of voice. "Is there someone who can teach me?"

"I think the best option would be to pay a visit to Winterhold and get enrolled in the mages' college," the blonde woman murmured, turning around with a shake of her head and walking down the ever-prominent road again. "I've heard that the best magicka users ever to walk Skyrim take shelter there in the hopes of advancing their studies."

"College?!" Meeryn squeaked, feeling as though she were getting a mental overload. "God, I'm gonna need to keep a journal so I don't get people and places mixed up. If I don't, all of this is going to be extremely confusing to me."

"You really are an odd one," Svena giggled, holding her a little more securely as she eyed the setting sun. "I think it'll be interesting to see what path you take as you grow into adulthood. Hopefully, I'll be there to protect you."

"You're the only person here that hasn't exactly left me behind or gotten killed," Meeryn muttered, tiredly resting her head against the woman's armored chest; she felt the effects of her exhaustion kicking in. "I'm kind of glad that I'm not going through this all alone… if you hadn't been here, I wouldn't have known what to do or where to go."

"Well, you'd probably have figured something out," Svena commented as she stepped over a shaky stone. "I kn—"

The woman's words were cut off when something huge slammed into her side, sending both females rolling across the ground; Meeryn let out a shriek when a wolf the size of a small horse leapt on top of Svena and savagely bit at the armor covering her arm. Meeryn instantly rolled to her feet and had just picked up a large stick to help her when another enormous wolf hurled itself it her: the animal crashed into her with a snarl, slamming the small redhead down on her back; she held the stick in front of her and used it to keep the animal off of her throat.

"NO! HELP ME!" Meeryn screeched, eyes huge with fright as she stared into those snapping jaws. Her arms shook with the strain of keeping the animal away from her. "NOOOOOOOOOO! NO MORE! NO MORE!"

"Hang on!" Svena cried, bashing the nose of the wolf latched onto her arm with repeated movements. "Hang on, little one, I'm coming! Don't let it hurt you! Fight it! Fight it with everything inside your heart and soul, child!"

She continued to bash the animal's nose and it yelped each time, but the beast didn't loosen its grip.

The tiny redhead's bare feet scrabbled at the ground as she pushed with all of her strength, gritting her sharp teeth as her neck bulged with the strain of keeping the ferocious animal at bay. It took everything she had just to keep it from sinking its teeth into her throat. She squeezed her yellow eyes shut as she slowly began to force the slavering animal higher into the air; when it was far enough back, the girl let out and angry screech and sent her big toe clean into its manhood: the animal yelped and leapt back with a snarling whine, allowing her just enough time to get to her feet. The redhead stood there with huge, streaming eyes and hefted her tree branch.

When another wolf charged at her, she swung the stick with all of her strength and hit it right in the face; shrieking, she continued to swing blindly at any wolf that came near enough to touch, gasping and crying as she fought against them with tears in her eyes. Then, one of the wolves bit the stick and tried to drag it out of her small hands; the girl nearly doubled over in her attempt to get it back, but then she pulled her body all the way back up, dug her heels into the ground, and struggled to make the creature let go with all of her strength.

However, the wolf jerked it free and she fell over.

Meeryn scrambled to her feet and tried to run over to where Svena was currently bashing in the skull of the wolf that had bit her armor, but before she managed to get there, one of the beasts snagged her blazer and jerked her off her feet. She let out a frightened cry when it began tugging on her braid, dragging her across the stony earth by her long hair; Kya flailed violently struggled to twist enough to jerk herself free, but before she could manage to do anything at all, the wolf she'd kicked off her body only a few minutes earlier leapt again.

She shrieked and raised her arm to cover her face and neck.

There was a flash of silver as someone's sword unexpectedly slammed into the monster's side.

A spray of dark blood flew through the air and the stench of warm copper followed it as Ralof barreled forward, jerking his sword out of the falling animal; he whirled around like a dancer, flawlessly slicing the throat of the wolf that had leapt at him from behind. The man leapt over Meeryn and cleaved the skull of the one who had caught her before doing the same for Svena; the woman and the girl were jerked to their feet in seconds by the blonde man.

"Let's go!" he bellowed, glaring when the girl blinked at him in unholy terror. "We've got to fight!"

Meeryn somehow managed to wrench herself into action as the wolf's corpse landed at her feet: the sheer terror and adrenaline flooding through her veins had literally propelled her into motion like a springboard. Heart pounding and feeling sick to her stomach, the tiny girl gripped the nearest stick she could find and bolted over to Svena. When her slender shoulders were pressed against the small of the woman's broad back, the girl hefted her stick.

"It'll be okay, Little Cub," Svena hissed threateningly, lifting her sword. "I won't let these beasts touch you again."

"Don't get hurt over me," Meeryn whimpered, locking her jaw as tears slid down her cheeks; more of the dark shapes flew forward, lunging towards the two of them with snarls and furious baying. The girl whipped her stick around and clubbed the closest wolf with it, smacking it clean in the face; the animal yelped when the wood whacked it smartly across the snout, but it was probably more from surprise than actual pain since she was weak.

Svena whirled around like lightning and struck out at a wolf with her boot, crushing its skull.

Meeryn swung at another wolf when it lunged, but as she did so, it managed to bite her stick like the wolf from a few minutes ago had done; the girl was stunned when she realized that the animals on Skyrim were overly intelligent compared to the animals on Earth. They somehow knew that she would be helpless without her weapon: she saw another wolf getting ready to spring at her, and she was completely helpless since Ralof was busy.

She was helpless… wait.

No… no... no, she wasn't!

She wasn't helpless, she had her powers!

The moment she thought of them, they erupted from her body like a maelstrom: with a flare of glittering light, the girl's eyes flashed from their iridescent golden color to a blinding bright blue and the silhouettes of two iridescent white wings exploded clean out of her back in a spray of silver fire. The redhead arched her back with a startled gasp as a weightless feeling engulfed her body: with the gracefulness of a ballet star, Meeryn D'Andesyrius let go of the stick and instinctively leapt into the air, flapping her wings downward to take off from the ground.

Lifting her arms above her head, she merely thought of the word _fire_ and it appeared above her hand: she glanced down to see Svena simultaneously fending off a gaggle of wolves with her sword while trying to gape at her, so she lifted her arm and stretched it out towards the woman in an attempt set the edge of her weapon on fire.

It burst into flames without warning.

"All right!" Svena roared in triumph, whirling the flaming wood around in a circle and grinning when the wolves backed off with fear in their eyes. The girl chanced a glance around and saw that Ralof had killed another three wolves that had foolishly attacked him; two more were circling warily, lingering just outside the reach of his sword. The blonde man merely stood still and peered up at her wings.

They stretched twelve feet from tip to tip.

Meeryn, however, began to descend when she started feeling extremely sleepy all of a sudden; before she even realized what was happening, she had fallen clean out of the air and had somehow ended up being cradled in Svena's strong arms. When she opened her eyes, the woman was staring at her with an unnerved expression.

_Is she one of my Moms now?_ Meeryn wondered in confusion, dazedly reaching up to touch her jaw.

"Are you okay?" the woman asked, lilting voice vibrating her entire body. "You look half asleep."

"I'm warm," she mumbled incoherently, looking around at the circling wolves and staring at his torch.

"Let's make it warmer so we get out of this situation alive," Svena grumbled, slowly making her way to the side and setting a bush on fire; then she moved to another and did the same thing there; then again at another. Ralof saw what the giant was doing and slid back to join in, gripping a stick and lighting it before setting the brush on fire. The wolves stayed beyond the flames, eyes glowing in the light: with several of the pack already dead, they evidently decided to look for something easier to hunt since they all began to melt away into the growing night, one by one.

"Not bad, lassies," Ralof admitted, giving the drowsy girl and scowling woman an appraising glance. "What you did was a very good, tactical move… still, how did she sprout those wings? For a moment, she looked incredibly threatening and… well, utterly _magnificent_: I've never something that amazing, not once in my entire life."

"I don't know," Meeryn mumbled, looking at him with tired eyes from her spot in the crook of Svena's arm. "It just happened to me somehow… I wasn't expecting it at all, but once I was there, I felt free… so very free… as though I could fly away in the endless sky and forget about every pain and sickening torment I've had to experience today."

"We overdid it," Svena suddenly sighed, shaking her head in dismay. "The fire's spreading too much."

It was indeed: several further bushes and one of the close trees were no on fire, and the heat was actually forcing them to retreat further and further away from the stones. More trees ignited in the spreading flames, and Meeryn realized with a dazed jolt that they had unintentionally created a wildfire that would spread throughout the forest.

"Let's go to Riverwood," Ralof barked urgently, gesturing towards a nearby forest path. "It'll be a good thing if we can get out of here before the fire spreads too much, but if we don't move now, we may get caught up in it!"

"Gotcha!" Svena sighed, hefting Meeryn more securely in her arms before she followed the Nord at top speed

"I feel sleepy," Meeryn murmured, dazedly being lulled to sleep by the rocking motion of Svena's arms.

"We're almost to Riverwood," the Nordic woman sighed; Meeryn mewled and snuggled into a ball when the woman smoothed her hair out of her eyes and gently tucked a few of the curly strands behind her ears. "I'll rent a room at the Inn so you can have a good night's rest… after everything you've been through today, I'd say you deserve it."

"Thanks, Mama," Meeryn mumbled incoherently, not even able to think properly anymore. Her world began to dissolve as she slowly fell asleep, cradled in the arms of a woman who had pledged to protect her and sheltered by a man who had been watching over her all along. "I feel like I'm finally home… this is where I truly belong."

_You are home, Little **Dovahkiin Kulaas**,_ the voice inside her mind whispered, coming so faintly that she could barely hear it now. _I'm so proud of you for coming this far. I love you with all my heart. but... goodbye, my darling daughter._

_Are you my Mommy, too? _Meeryn wondered, falling asleep with the words on her tongue.


	7. Chapter 6: Little Red Riding Hood

**Chapter Six: Little Red Riding Hood**

When Meeryn's eyes fluttered and she slowly opened them, she felt dazed… almost as though she'd slept for a long time and had somehow been completely unaware of it. Her tongue felt dry and full of cotton, her throat was parched, her body felt weak, and she could feel that her hair had turned into an unmanageable haystack. However, when she slowly sat up and looked around, she had been expecting to see the familiar surroundings of her bedroom: not the strange, undecorated wooden walls that lay around her.

She immediately blinked as a feeling of terror smashed into her stomach: eyes going wide with incomprehension, she started breathing raggedly and frantically looked around before pulling the covers of to her chin. However, the moment she realized she was holding animal skins of some sort, her panic skyrocketed through the roof and she let out an earsplitting screech. She crawled out of bed and scrabbled into a corner, hugging herself and looking around the room with terror-stricken eyes. When a burly blonde man and a big-boned blonde woman bolted into the room through an old skin-curtain with their swords drawn, the girl screeched again and covered her face with both hands.

"WHERE AM I?!" Meeryn shrieked, wailing hysterically and bursting into tears before she began hyperventilating from sobbing too much. "MOMMY! DADDY! HELP! SOMEONE, HELP ME!"

"Little one, calm down!" Ralof barked, dropping his weapon and falling to his knees in front of her; when he gripped her shoulders, the girl screamed even louder and struggled to bolt away from him. "Stop struggling!"

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Meeryn shrieked, lifting a hand and swatting at him; her hand immediately exploded with a gale of wind and the Nord was blown clean into Svena, who let out a muffled squawk as they landed outside of the curtain. The explosive power radiating from her body was what brought her to: she immediately stared at her hand as the memories of the previous day swept through her. "Oh, no… no, no, no! WHY?! I woke up, didn't I?!"

Almost immediately, her eyes went blank and she weakly sank back against the wall; Ralof charged back into the room, looking ready to give her a tongue-lashing for being so idiotic, but when he saw the state she was in he faltered greatly. The girl was clutching her face with shaking hands and staring at the floor through her fingers with blank eyes. Hers were sparkling yellow eyes that still streamed those terrified tears, which made him frown deeply.

He immediately understood that this was a terror of a different sort.

"Shor's blood, little cub, you pack a powerful whallop when you need to," Svena panted, rubbing her stomach with wide eyes and a huge grimace. "If that man had hit me any harder, I would have been speared by his armor!"

"A-a-am I… aw-w-w-wake?" Meeryn stuttered inaudibly, looking up at them with terror-stricken eyes.

"As far as I know," Svena murmured, wincing as she straightened her dented armor. "That really hurt."

"You didn't have to get plowed by the direct blast," Ralof retorted, frowning at the girl before he put a hesitant hand on her disheveled red hair. "Look, little lass… yesterday was an extremely terrifying situation, and it was highly unsavory for someone as young as you to be put through it, but you're probably going to be enduring the delayed shock you missed out on over the next few days. A calamity can do that to a person: it waits for calm."

"I… want to go home," Meeryn whimpered, face contorting as she slowly buried her face in her knees and began to weep; an enormous ache had started gnawing at her heart when she'd remembered that she wasn't in New York anymore, and she was missing her adoptive family so much that it was forcing the chest-heaving sobs out of her.

"Please don't cry," Svena murmured unhappily, sheathing her weapon. "You've been unconscious for three days, and the entire town of Riverwood is buzzing about the little girl in red who arrived here in my arms. Just so you'd fit the gossip around here, I'm having Camilla Valerius make you a dress with a red and yellow cloak to go with it."

"That dress is already finished," a soft voice uneasily called from the flap. "I'm sorry, but… I heard screaming."

"I-I'm fine," Meeryn shakily called, rubbing her eyes and slowly standing up; a disheveled clump of frizzy hair fell across her eyes and she crossed them comically in an attempt to look at it. "Well, sort of… I need a brush."

"It's all taken care of," Ralof grunted, getting to his feet and sheathing his own weapon. "When you ladies are done getting her dressed like a normal young lass, we're going to meet my Sister: she needs to know what happened."

"No worries," Svena chuckled, folding her hands behind her head as the man walked out; only a few seconds later, another woman with a pixie-like face and glossy dark hair walked into the room. Meeryn immediately noticed that she had hazel eyes and pale skin that was dotted with adorable freckles, and when she smiled, her face lit up.

"Hello," she greeted in a sweet, whispery tone of voice. "I'm Camilla. If you don't feel comfortable calling me that, you can just call me Auntie if you'd like: every town child does, so I've kind of gotten used to it."

"Um, can I just call you Miss Camilla?" Meeryn asked politely, trying to discreetly pat her long hair down.

"Of course," the woman replied, smiling again before turning to Svena and bowing low; the big woman blinked and unfolded her arms in surprise when Camilla stood upright again with an apologetic demeanor. "I'm sorry it took so long to get this done, but we've had a bit of trouble with a thief who stole valuable heirlooms from us. I examined the stitching in her clothing like you asked me to so her nobility wouldn't be tarnished, but the dress and cloak actually took me more time to learn because of the fine needlework and unfamiliar style. On top of that, her shoes still need to be molded… but everything set aside, I might actually be able to start up a business to rival Radiant Raiment's franchise with this type of needlework. If she'd permit me, I'd like to try some new clothing ideas."

"Go ahead," Meeryn stated bluntly, cocking an eyebrow. "If my school uniform is so interesting, you can keep it."

"Really?!" Camilla asked, eyes going wide in surprise. "That's a very generous offer that I _must_ repay in full! I'll give you three new outfits in your size along with a traveling pack and the clothing that Miss Svena ordered."

"You ordered me some clothing?" the redhead asked, looking up at the woman with dazed eyes. "Thank you…"

"No problem, little one," the Nord chuckled, cracking a grin. "You only had one other outfit in your bag, anyway."

"Well, if you don't mind, shall we get you dressed up?" Camilla asked, pulling a bag over to her side and setting it on a table next to a stool. "If you'd oblige, you can go ahead and relax on the stool. I've always wanted to try this style on a woman with long hair, but all of the girls and adolescents in this village keep their hair extremely short."

"Um, are you giving me a makeover or something?" Meeryn hesitantly asked, slowly making her way over to the stool and sitting down in nothing but her underwear and bra. "I've never really done this before… "

"Well, then just sit still and do as I say," Camilla murmured kindly, taking an old-fashioned bristle brush out of her bag along with a comb made out of some type of animal bone; Meeryn winced when the teeth of the brush snagged on her hair, but she dealt with the pain in silence. After all, she was used to it: her hair was always messy in the mornings if she forgot to braid it, and untangling her curls was a huge hassle that she'd always tried to avoid.

"You're going to look very pretty when all is said and done," Svena chuckled proudly, nodding in approval before she headed for the door flap. "Take care of our Meeryn, Camilla: she's a sweet girl, but she's been through a lot."

With that, the woman disappeared.

"Finally," Camilla sighed in relief, putting a hand to her head with a shaky expression. "That woman has scared me senseless a number of times in the last three days, always looking over my shoulder to see what I'm doing, always poking around and checking up on you when I take your body measurements… she really spooks me."

"She acts like mother cat," Meeryn whispered, mouth splitting into a grin when it hit her. "Wow… no wonder they call her and her sister the Lioness and the Tigress: they must get really revved up over their kids and teenagers."

"Well, when you put it that way, she seems just a tad less scary," Camilla giggled, covering her mouth to muffle it before she went back to combing with a more relieved smile on her face. "The majority of the village is talking about the way you arrived, you know… when Miss Svena and Ralof arrived with you, we thought you were dead."

"What do you mean they thought I was dead?" the redhead asked in shock, twitching a little bit when the woman switched to the comb to get the finer tangles out of her long hair. "Didn't they see me breathing?"

"Yes, but not when you first arrived," Camilla admitted, shaking her head. "In fact, only one person saw you, and she seems to be a bit of a gossip: nobody aside from Ralof, Svena, and myself have actually seen you in person. As of right now, you're the mysterious princess who's supposedly being hidden from Imperial spies in our village."

"Wait, _me_?" Meeryn scoffed, squeezing her eyes shut at the dorky irony. "How could a klutz be a princess?"

"What's a klutz?" Camilla asked in confusion, making the girl burst into a fit of laughter.

"Never mind, it's not important," the redhead giggled, shaking her head, "but, I'm definitely not a princess."

"You look like one," the dark-haired woman murmured softly. "I'm actually kind of envious of your beauty."

"Wait, really?" Meeryn asked, blinking in stunned surprise. "Why would you be jealous of someone like me? I mean, my hair is way too long, my eyes are a freaky shade of yellow, and my skin is too pale to be pretty! On top of those faults, I'm extremely short and overly scrawny, which means I can't do much physically… and medically, I have a few extreme problems that could end up being a severe handicap in the coming years. I'm _not_ pretty."

"I beg to differ," Camilla sighed, pulling the top layer of Meeryn's long bangs to the side and braiding them in an intricate sweeping design towards the back of her head; then she did the same with the other side and put the comb in her mouth so she could grab a yellow ribbon from her bag. Once she'd tied the gleaming curls at the base of where the braided strands met, she continued braiding the joined hair down her back over the gleaming wave of curls that swept in every direction. Once that was finished, the woman move in front of Meeryn and made a few adjustments to her bangs before she pulled out the outfit she'd created. The girl's first instinct was to squeal.

"Oh, wow!" Meeryn whispered, looking at the amazing outfit with rapturous eyes. "This looks like a totally cute version of my school uniform, only more flowing and absolutely gorgeous because of the crimson fabric! Wow!"

"I'm glad you like it," Camilla murmured shyly, smiling at the girl from behind her lashes. "It took a lot of work, and it's the very first of its kind in all of Skyrim… I was hoping for something more extravagant, but this is the result."

"Extravagant?!" the redhead squeaked in amazement. "What do you mean?! This is_ extravagant_ as it can _get_!"

It was true: the outfit had a ruffled skirt that looked very similar to Meeryn's school skirt, but instead of being black and separate from the blazer, it was completely red and seamlessly connected to the top; however, the part that shocked the redhead to the core was the part that was supposed to mimic her school blazer. The inner arms were made of a skin-tight maroon fabric that would definitely cling to her in a pleasant way, but around it was a sheer, weightless fabric that billowed outwards from the elbow down.

It was airy, and it gave the sleeves a profound amount of style.

On top of that, instead of having simple buttons shooting up the front, there was a beautiful yellow sash weaving in and out of the openings in a crisscrossed style. At the throat, the yellow sash was tied in a beautiful ribbon, and at the waist it swept behind her back and tied into another gorgeous ribbon before hanging loosely. The outfit was completed by a beautiful shawl that she could wrap around her shoulders in the winter months, along with a red cloak that would shelter her body from prying eyes. All in all, the outfit was stunning… and not too frilly at all.

Simple, but absolutely gorgeous: it had Meeryn's style all over it.

"Miss Camilla," the redhead stated politely, looking at the woman with accusing eyes.

"Y-yes?" she peeped, looking worried almost instantly; however, her hazel eyes popped open when the tiny girl lunged at her with outstretched arms and buried her face in her shoulder. "W-what in the world are you doing?!"

"Thank you," Meeryn whispered, making the woman pause. "Thank you so much. It's the most amazing gift ever."

"Well, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but…" the woman murmured, awkwardly unpeeling the girl's hands from her body before glancing at the outfit. "Well, let's just say that you're still severely under-dressed, shall we?"

**TXXXXXT**

Ten minutes later, Meeryn came out of the farm hut just beyond Riverwood's outskirts and made her way over to where Svena and Ralof were waiting with folded arms. However, the moment the two Nords glanced at her, they both encountered different reactions to her appearance: Ralof's eyes went wide and his mouth fell open before he caught himself and turned away, shifting his legs a bit as a bright red flush swept across his face. Svena merely cocked an eyebrow and grinned in an impressed manner, since the girl really did look drop-dead gorgeous.

Meeryn, on the other hand, didn't exactly like the feeling of makeup on her face.

The blush made her cheeks itch, the lip-gloss made her mouth feel sticky, and her eyes felt heavier somehow.

"You can get any man you want with a face like that," Svena chuckled, shaking her head as she looked closer with an expression of obvious amazement. "Be it today or thirty years from now: you have a very rare kind of beauty."

"I don't feel pretty," the girl stated simply, working her mouth a little with a grimace. "I feel… itchy and sticky."

"You'll grow accustomed to the enchanted cosmetics," Camilla soothed, nodding. "They'll never fade unless you will them to go away, but the best part is the fact that you can will them back at any time: it really works"

"Well, I guess that saves me the trouble of ever giving myself a makeover someday," Meeryn snorted, rolling her eyes before she pulled one of her _mocking-the-blondes_ stunts. Crossing her eyes and making a dorky face, she immediately cocked her hip and flapped her arm like a ditzy diva and squawked, "_Like, ohmigaaawd, if any of the ditzy blonde girlsss back home could get their pretty fingersss on magic makeup, the world would be, like, glam!_"

"Eh?" Ralof deadpanned, staring at her with blank eyes. "I think my brain was just slaughtered in battle… I could not best the terrifying image in front of me. Erm… am I wrong in assuming that you were trying to scare us?"

"Nope, I'm just imitating some dumb people from my homeland," Meeryn piously explained, folding her hands like a prim and proper little lady; she didn't want to admit it, but when she glanced in the river and saw her own reflection, she nearly passed out from the shock that went through her. The poor girl hadn't really believed that she could have ever turned out to be so pretty, especially with make-up on, but she had been dead wrong.

Unfortunately, she was only so pretty because her striking features drew more attention.

Or… at least, that's what she believed, anyway.

"Let's head to over to Gerdur's," Ralof muttered, turning away as obviously male thoughts coursed through his mind and made his face burn bright red. "She'll be wondering why there are rumors of your arrival going around."

Meeryn shrugged and daintily obliged; with a wave to Camilla and a heartfelt thanks from Svena that left the woman with a nearly-broken back, the trio headed towards the entrance into Riverwood and walked into the dusty cobblestone streets. Meeryn pulled her hood up when an old woman sitting on a porch stood up and yelled.

"I'm telling you, I saw a dragon!" the woman snapped, stomping forward towards a young man with reddish blonde hair and unhappy brown eyes. "It was big as a mountain, and black as night! It flew right over the barrow three days ago! You have to believe me, Sven, it was a real live dragon and I swear that thing is still out there!"

"Dragons now, is it?" the man demanded with an unenthusiastic demeanor. "Mother, please… three days ago you were ranting about a young princess in red being hidden inside the farm hut just down the road by two Stormcloak soldiers who were fleeing the empire. If you keep on like this, everyone in town will think you're going crazy!"

"Sven!" the woman gasped indignantly.

"I've got better things to do than listen to more of your fantasies," the man sighed, rolling his eyes and walking away with his shoulders tensed up. "I'm heading down to the Tavern to brush up on my music skills, now."

"You'll see!" the woman angrily called, shaking her fist. "It was a dragon! It'll kill us all and then you'll believe me!"

"Isn't that kind of backwards?" Meeryn whispered to Svena, who shrugged and shook her head; out of a firm desire to sate her burning curiosity, the dolled-up redhead bounced over to the woman and tapped her arm just as she turned to head back to her bench. "Excuse me, Ma'am… I'm not a princess. I'm just a traveler of sorts."

"Oh, my!" the woman gasped, covering her mouth in shock. "You sure you're not a princess?"

"Um, definitely," the girl confirmed with a nod, "but, what I want to ask you is this: did you really see a dragon?"

"Yes," the woman muttered, holding her back as she sat down in her chair and straightened her bonnet, "nobody believes, but I'm telling you, I saw a dragon! It was the most frightening thing I've ever seen, and it was so large!"

"Where did it fly off to?" Ralof asked, frowning worriedly. "Did you catch the direction?"

"It flew east, towards the barrow!" the woman murmured, wincing a bit. "Old Hilde has to rest now, dears."

"Okay, Ma'am," Meeryn chirped, giving her a coy salute. "Thanks for the information!"

"No worries, little princess in disguise," the woman sighed, closing her pale blue eyes. "Oh, and did you hear? The Riverwood trader was robbed… poor Lucan must be torn to pieces over it. The man is such a hard worker, too."

"Gerdur's house is this way," Ralof sighed, striding off down the road with Svena close behind; Meeryn shrugged and observed her surroundings as she followed the two of them into her first Skyrim village. The houses and buildings seemed to be made of sturdy wood from the forest, but their roofs were completely thatched up.

They really did have a more primitive lifestyle than people back on Earth did.

"Wherever I ended up," Meeryn muttered, shaking her head as the breeze played with her curly bangs, "it's crazy."

"Ralof!" a man with an extremely thick accent suddenly cried, startling the girl so badly that she jumped into the air with an alarmed squeak. "What are you doing here?! Wait, wait! Just stay there, I'll be right down!"

"Meet me at the pine island!" the rugged man called back with a wave; Meeryn straightened her hood only to have it practically torn from her head by a blonde boy who shredded past her with a whoop of delight. The girl watched with wide eyes as he sprinted over to her companion and glomped his leg with a laugh.

"Uncle Ralof!" he cried, looking up at the burly man with shining blue eyes. "Can I see your axe?! How many Imperials have you killed?! Do you really know Ulfric Stormcloak?! And who's your pretty new friend!"

"Do you mean me?" Svena asked, looking a bit flustered when she pointed to herself and the boy nodded. "Um, we're only acquaintances, little one… I'm only around him because I'm protecting someone who needs me."

"Hush, Frodnar," a blonde woman murmured in a beautiful Nordic accent. "This is no time for your games. Go and watch the south road for me: I want you come find us again if you happen to see any imperial soldiers coming."

"Aw, Mama," the blonde boy pouted, frowning at the woman. "I want to stay and talk to Uncle Ralof!"

"Look at you!" Ralof murmured, squatting down and measuring the boy's height with a glint of fatherly pride in his normally frigid blue eyes. "You're almost a grown man! It won't be long before you'll be joining the fight, yourself!"

"That's right, Uncle Ralof!" the boy bravely exclaimed, puffing his little chest out. "Don't worry, I won't let those soldiers sneak up on you and your friends! They'll never make it here in time to find you because I'm on patrol!"

Meeryn watched him run right past her a second time with hesitant eyes before she made her way over to the man and two women standing in the shelter of the pine tree. She purposely hid behind Svena and stared at the ground with an uneasy expression, since she really didn't know how she was supposed to be a part of all this. All she knew right then was that she was somehow the Dragonborn: she wanted to keep that a secret.

"Now, what's going on?" the man who'd shouted for Ralof a little while earlier asked, glancing at Meeryn and observing the way she was clinging to Svena before he glanced at his in-law. "You three look pretty done in."

"I can't remember when I last slept," Ralof muttered, shaking his head. "Whew… where to start? Well, the news you heard about Ulfric was true: the Imperials ambushed us outside of Darkwater Crossing like they knew exactly where we'd be. That was… five days ago, now. We stopped in Helgen, and I thought it was all over."

"They had us lined up to the headsman's block and ready to start chopping," Svena added, shaking her head and looking at Meeryn over her shoulder when the girl shivered. "They were going to execute this youngling, too."

"The cowards," Gerdur hissed, shooting a glance at Meeryn in an attempt to see the girl a little better.

"They wouldn't dare give Ulfric a trial," Ralof grumbled, thick neck tensing in fury. "Treason, for fighting for your own people! All of Skyrim would have seen the truth then! But then… out of nowhere… a dragon attacked…"

"You don't mean a real, live…" Gerdur hesitantly asked, face going slack in shock. "I don't believe it."

"I can hardly believe it myself, and I was there with him," Svena hesitantly added, lifting a hand. "As strange as it's going to sound, we'd be dead if it hadn't been for that dragon. In the confusion, we all managed to slip away."

"Are we really the first to make it to Riverwood?" Ralof asked, eyes going wide.

"Nobody else has come up the south road in the last five days," Gerdur replied, then added, "as far as I know."

"Good," Ralof stated in a hoarse voice, rubbing his eyes in a tired manner before tipping his head back. "Maybe the three of us can lay up for a while. I'd hate to put your family in danger, Gerdur, but…"

"Nonsense," the woman stated soothingly, putting her hands under his arms and pulling him into a hug before she turned and walked over to Svena with a friendly expression on her face; she quickly pulled something out of her pocket and held it out with a grim. "Here's the key to the house: you and your friend are welcome to stay here as long as you need to. Let me worry about the imperials: any friend of Ralof's is a friend of mine."

"May the Earth you walk on quake in your passage," Svena murmured respectfully, "and may your blade be true."

"Divines smile on you," Gerdur murmured, shaking her head before a thought struck her. "There is something you could do for me, though… I got a letter the other day from the Jarl, and he wants to know if there's really a dragon on the loose since Riverwood is defenseless against any kind of aerial attack. I need to get word to Jarl Baalgruff that there is one so he'll send more guards down here. If you two ladies would do that for me, I'd be in your debt."

"Where does this Mister Baalgruff live?" Meeryn hesitantly asked, slowly moving out from behind Svena's back and coming into the light of the afternoon sun; the woman did a double-take before blinking at her.

"Youngling is the right term for you," she murmured. "From what I can see, you're not even a woman yet."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm young," Meeryn sighed in dismay, shoulders drooping before she slowly pulled her hood down and looked at the woman with an emotionless expression; her eyes widened the moment she saw her face in clear lighting and she immediately had to blink the shock away. "Unfortunately, I also have no memories."

"The imperials injured her head somehow," Ralof croaked, tiredly rubbing his eyes. "Threw her in the wagon, too, even though she obviously wasn't a part of the Stormcloak rebellion. They probably thought she was a foreigner."

"The Jarl is in Whiterun," Svena whispered into her ear, catching the small girl's attention when she let out a sigh of dismay; she was now being completely ignored and her question had been totally forgotten. "Don't worry about that too much, little one: I know my way around Skyrim, and I _also_ know how to strike up a damn good bargain."

So saying, she stepped up to Gerdur and politely asked if there were any provisions to be bought; the blonde woman nodded and responded by leading her towards her house. Meeryn waited in the waning afternoon as Ralof limped after the two of them with an exhausted demeanor, and the other man followed him with grim eyes.

After about ten minutes of waiting, Svena came back with an enormous hiking pack slung across her shoulders and a much smaller one dangling from her hands… but the woman was no longer wearing her Stormcloak armor. She was wearing a simple but very pretty green and brown travel dress. The skirt hung just below her knees, the neck was square-cut with no sleeves for easier arm movements, and a pair of leather hiking boots completed the outfit.

She looked pretty awesome for someone going on a hike.

"Well, shall we have lunch, or in your case… breakfast?" Svena cheerily asked, looking down at Meeryn with color in her cheeks and a smile on her face. "I've already decided that I'm going to be looking out for you from now on."

"Wait, really?!" Meeryn gasped, looking up at the woman's face with shining eyes. "You're really going to let me come with you wherever it is you're going?! But… but… why would you wanna hang around someone like me?!"

"That's what comrades do, Little cub," Svena chuckled, shoving a sweet roll and a loaf of bread into her hands. "Go ahead and eat up, Meeryn… because you're the one who is going to be making the decisions. I'm going to sit back and watch over you until my presence becomes needed, or you ask me for advice on what I should do. All mothers give their sons and daughters a fair amount of freedom while watching over them, so I am watching over yours."

"Well, okay," the girl stammered, dusting off the tree stump before she sat down and took a bite of her bread; she immediately froze and chewed extremely slowly, because the bread tasted sweeter than a cinnamon doughnut from the vendors New York. After she was finished swallowing, the girl blinked tears out of her eyes and looked at Svena with a stunned expression. "If I had known bread around here was so good, I'd have bought a store."

The woman only laughed and sat down on a rock before eating her lunch.

When the two of them were full and satisfied, Meeryn walked over and took Svena's hand in her own: the woman smiled without looking down at her, but the redhead grinned when she squeezed her palm a little bit to let her know that she was happy. After waving at Gerdur and Ralof, who had both come to see them off, the Nord and the Angel began walking down the road towards the city known as Whiterun to warn everyone about the evil dragon.

Thus began the journey that changed many different worlds.


	8. Chapter 7: The Journey Begins sort of

**Chapter Seven: The Journey Begins… Sort of**

"Wow!" Meeryn gasped, running to the edge of the bridge leading out of Riverwood and gazing at the stream with rapturous yellow eyes; she instantly turned to Svena with a huge smile. "Svena! Look! Fish are jumping out of the water all over the place! Ooh, and look at the size of that mountain! I can't even see the top of it from here!"

"You really _are_ an odd one," the woman chuckled, looking at the world around her. "This is just a typical view."

"Typical?!" Meeryn squawked, smiling as she bounced over to the other side of the bridge and looked downstream with amazed eyes. "How can you call Skyrim typical when everything around you is so unbelievably _magical_?!

"I grew up around it," the woman laughed, smoothing her dress as she walked forward and nudged the girl towards the road. "Now, if we ever want to get to Whiterun, the first thing to do would be walking there. We'll never get going if you stop to gawk at every butterfly and rabbit we pass along the way."

"You mean we'll get to see more bunnies?!" the redhead gasped, clutching the woman's arms in delight. "YAY! LET'S GO!"

So saying, Meeryn took off down the road: she was in a much better mood than when she'd first woken up.

"She's more energetic than half the men back at the Stormcloak encampment," Svena snorted, rolling her eyes in amusement as she followed the girl with a watchful eye. "I wish she could sprinkle that energy on me... I feel half asleep."

"Oh!" Meeryn squeaked, turning around and walking backwards once again. "I almost forgot! I promised to teach you how to fight in hand to hand combat, so after we deliver this message or whatever, I'll show you what I know!"

"I look forward to it," Svena chuckled, smiling a little as she watched the teenager whip around and skip ahead of her in a carefree fashion; sometimes it actually caught the woman off guard since she seemed to be a lot younger than fifteen, but she knew for a fact that she actually liked the girl's naïve and innocent personality. It made her seem very pure, somehow… especially since the large world around them was so hostile and overly threatening.

Watching Meeryn gave Svena the motivation to free her country so more children could freely act this way.

"Wow, there are a lot of towns," the girl murmured, looking up at the immense amount of signs sticking out of the two wooden poles resting at the end of the bridge; she immediately fished around in her pocket for the little journal that Svena had given her earlier, and with precise fingers she scrawled down the names on the signs. After that, she double checked all of them and put the little notebook back into her pocket with a sigh. "I'm gonna need to start memorizing the name of every city, village, and town if I ever want to start reading a map around here properly."

"That sounds like a good place to start," Svena murmured approvingly.

"Okay, let's see," Meeryn murmured, looking at the two roads which seemed to be heading off in completely different directions. After a moment, the redhead bit her lip and started off on the road to the right: she didn't really know if it was the right direction since the signs had been bent askew, but she was hoping her decision was correct. Meeryn's red cloak billowed behind her like a cloud as she walked along the cobblestone road with Svena, but after only ten minutes the cobblestone started fading into a dirt path and she faltered a little bit.

"Something wrong?" Svena lazily inquired, large hands interlaced behind her shoulder-length blonde hair.

"Yeah," Meeryn bluntly replied, rubbing her eyes as she walked down the road resting beside the river. "I'm really nervous about getting the two of us lost. I've never really done this sort of thing before, and not knowing which way to go is really making me edgy."

"I have faith in you," the Nord sighed, stepping forward and patting her shoulder. "Plus, even if you make a mistake, I won't become irritated: in fact, I'm finding it rather funny that you seem so new to everything."

"Thanks," Meeryn murmured sourly, shrinking back into her hood and hiding her large yellow eyes with a huff of annoyance. "Anyway, let's keep going down this road until we find another sign: the sky is starting to cloud over, and I don't want to get rained on."

"Well, as long as we keep going in the right direction," Svena grunted, hefting her pack as she continued walking behind the tiny redhead, "I'm sure we'll make it to the city of Whiterun before nightfall."

The two females continued on in silence, but Meeryn was actually starting to feel a little cold: her bare legs were exposed to the elements as they trekked farther down into the wilderness, and she soon had to wrap her cloak around her arms just to keep herself warm. Svena, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying the increasingly cold air despite the fact that she didn't have warm clothes on. The two of them walked down the road for nearly an hour before the clouds darkened into a misty gray overcast and it slowly began to snow: Meeryn looked up at the descending flakes with a mournful expression, wishing she'd been given a winter jacket instead of an overly pretty outfit. She was more of a convenience lover than a fashion lover, so pretty clothes were useless to her if they didn't serve any other purposes aside from making a girl look cute.

"You should be careful around this part of the road," Svena warned, stopping Meeryn from walking around a sharp bend that rapidly started descending towards an enormous waterfall in the river. "The earth around here is unstable. Many a traveler has fallen prey to the river because of this area."

"Yikes." Meeryn murmured, blinking uneasily before glancing at the ground in front of her. "I'll keep that in mind."

So saying, the tiny redhead tiptoed around the mossy stones and let out a sigh of relief when the road turned and began descending away from the river. The girl looked at the scenery with mesmerized eyes as she walked, taking in all the birds that were flying in the air and the odd-looking squirrels chattering up in the trees. Quite unexpectedly, she came face to face with a deer after moving aside a branch that had stretched across the road: her resulting squeal of surprise caused the animal to bolt away and trot into the undergrowth, but her resulting shock was still extremely intense.

"Did you see that?!" Meeryn yelped, looking at Svena with an open mouth. "I almost kissed a deer by accident!"

Svena's only response was to let out a howl of laughter that made her flush with embarrassment. After that particular incident, the two of them continued on through the mountainous forests, following the road downhill and observing the breathtaking landscapes as they went. However, the farther down they went, the warmer and foggier it became: Meeryn soon had trouble seeing anything, and she stuck close to Svena so the two of them wouldn't get separated in the mist. Unfortunately, the redhead spotted something in the trees as they were walking.

Moving shadows… then the sound of rough, mean voices.

"Svena," the girl whispered quietly, putting a hand on the woman's arm. "I just saw something…"

"I know," the woman murmured softly, drawing her sword before tapping her on the nose. "I will be right back."

"Where are you going?" Meeryn hissed, shoulders tensing in alarm; the woman winked and melted into the fog, but the redhead thought against doing anything stupid when the sound of two metallic _thwacks_ echoed towards her from somewhere in the fog; a few moments later, she Svena's chiding voice and several rapid words hit her ears. Still, true to her word, the woman came back with her sword sheathed and a triumphant smirk on her face.

"Let's get going again," she chuckled, hefting her pack.

"Do I even want to know?" Meeryn asked uncomfortably, eyeing the tall woman up in dismay.

"I just knocked out some idiotic Imperials and freed one of my comrades, that's all," the woman explained, cocking an amused eyebrow when Meeryn's eyes widened in horror. "Don't worry, child: they didn't even hear me coming, and I doubt they'll wake up in time to catch the two of us."

"I'll say," Meeryn scoffed, shaking her head before starting off down the road once again.

After another four hours of walking, the tiny redhead froze for a moment; then she slowly walked over to an outcropping of stone and pulled her hood down, yellow eyes large and mouth slowly going slack. The fog that had been present for most of their hike was lifting, but as it did so… it began to reveal an enormous plain. About three miles off was an amazing castle with buildings stretching down around it and dotting the landscape farther off: it looked like something that was suited for an Italian coast because of the layered development style, but somehow it was just so much more majestic than the pictures Meeryn had seen in books.

Shaking her head, she continued to gape at the clouds drifting around the castle keep.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Svena asked, coming up beside Meeryn and patting her head with a huge grin. "That's the city of Whiterun, and the castle up there is Dragon's Reach. Legends say that it was once built to capture a dragon."

"Amazing? Svena, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen," Meeryn whispered in awe; Svena chuckled and gripped her hand once again, tenderly pulling her away from the outcropping and leading her back towards the road with a smile on her face. "Wait, where are we going now? I want to look at the castle a just a little longer! Please?"

"Don't you want to see it close up?" Svena mischievously inquired, sending out the bait. "If so, then let's get going."

"Okay, okay, as long as I can see the castle!" Meeryn sighed, stepping forward and bouncing down the road with a lot more spring in her step. "Wow! Look at all of those houses! I've never seen buildings like those before!"

"Really?" Svena called after her, cocking an eyebrow; then she blinked and sighed. "Oh… right, no memories."

"Sorry," Meeryn giggled nervously, giving a little shrug before she noticed something and paused; a second later, she was literally sprinting down the road at top speed because she had spotted the signposts. Stepping up to the first one, the girl eagerly examined them with an excited expression before she turned to look at Svena. "Hey, do you think we might be able to get some more of that yummy bread for dinner? Or are there other yummy things?"

The woman merely folded her arms and sighed in amusement at her question, smiling faintly. When the two women were passing by a fancy-looking stone building, Meeryn walked over to the sign in front of it and blinked in total surprise: it depicted a huge, buzzing bee-hive with an open door and enormous grapevines growing around it. She glanced around the sign and saw another one a little farther off, making her frown.

"Honningbrew Meadery?" she wondered aloud, glancing at the building in amazement.

"They make some very good drink," Svena chuckled admiringly, moving past her and walking down the road with a little flick of her blonde hair. "I once tried a very potent blackberry wine and was floored after the third glass!"

"Wow," Meeryn muttered, withdrawing into her crimson hood and covering her cute clothes when she spotted an enormous man in chainmail armor walking towards them. "I'm guessing that you Nords drink a lot, huh?"

"Yep!" the woman laughed, turning her jade green eyes on the sky with a happy smile on her freckled face. "I hold my drink just as well as I hold myself in a battle, and don't you ever forget it! Now come on, Little Cub!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" the redhead sighed, trotting behind the woman; she was trying to admire the river flowing from a dark grate in the walls of the city, but she figured there would be enough time to go sightseeing in Whiterun a little later on. She wasn't going to admit it out loud, but the world around her was absolutely amazing. On her left, the girl passed by some sort of crop farm where several people were working; a little farther down was some sort of old-styled mill that slowly turned in the wind. Meeryn noticed that a house lay just beyond it.

"That was Pelagia Farm," Svena commented, watching as the redhead bounded up to the fork in the road and gazed at the signs with narrowed eyes. After a moment, the tiny girl turned to look at the path that split off from the main road and stared up at Whiterun's entrance with an awed expression on her face. Meeryn took a deep breath when she saw a man eying the two of them from his spot on an empty horse-drawn carriage, feeling unnerved.

"Well, do you think we're ready to go see the… Jarl guy?" Meeryn asked, furrowing her brows.

"That depends," Svena teased, intertwining her fingers behind her head. "I'll let you decide, _Dova_… er, dove."

"What's with all the different nicknames?" Meeryn asked, cocking an eyebrow. Svena merely winced and shrugged a little, which made her frown. After a moment of looking around, the girl took the woman's hand and walked towards the enormous walls with the hopes of being granted an audience with the Jarl of Whiterun. She saw Svena eyeing a building nearby and blinked when the woman detached her hand and stopped walking; Meeryn turned around and tilted her head back so she could look up at her, but the girl's heart lurched unpleasantly when she saw the apologetic expression.

"I'm sorry," Svena murmured, shaking her head, "but I have some unfinished business from the last time I was here that needs to be taken care of. Meet me at the Bannered Mare in the city once you've finished speaking with Jarl Baalgruff. If you get lost, ask for directions: the locals are a friendly bunch."

"W-what do you mean?" the redhead squeaked, arms locking up in fright. "Are… are you going to come back?"

"I promise," Svena chuckled, mussing up her hair before tossing her a pouch of coins. "If not tonight, then rent a room and wait until tomorrow: I guarantee that this shouldn't take very long, but there are debts owed to me."

"Well, if you say so," Meeryn whispered, watching as the woman smiled and trotted off with a wave.

Swallowing hard, the girl turned her yellow eyes up towards the walls of Whiterun as her anxiety spiked towards the clouds. One of the biggest reasons why she hadn't felt so scared was because she'd had someone with her for so long.

Being all alone in a strange place was one of her biggest fears.

After patting her cheeks to give them some color and taking a deep breath, Meeryn headed down the road and timidly stepped beneath an ancient-looking overpass before heading towards a wooden construction made for keeping watch. She saw two more men wearing chainmail armor and concealing helmets standing atop it as she made her way across a small wooden bridge; they glanced at her and watched as she walked past their tower, making her feel extremely uncomfortable and causing her to shrink back into her hood. When the road finally turned at a sharp angle, Meeryn darted around corner and sighed in relief; she was extremely relieved since their gazes could no longer linger on her. After dusting off her new beautiful dress and straightening her loose white stockings, the small girl crossed a small drawbridge and followed the cobblestone path towards the huge double doors. However, the moment she stopped to stare at them in wonder, an armored man approached her.

"Halt!" he barked, making the girl jump with a squeak. "The city is off limits to travelers by order of the Jarl."

"B-but, we came all the way from Riverwood to talk to the Jarl," Meeryn stammered, knees shaking violently as she stared up at the enormous man in fright. "A lady from there said they needed the Jarl's help because of the dragon!"

"Riverwood's in danger, too?" the guard asked, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. "That bit of news changes matters completely… go on inside the city, little girl: you'll find the Jarl up in Dragon's Reach castle."

"U-um," Meeryn stammered, lifting a hand when he turned to go, "my companion, Svena, can she…?"

"I'll notify the other guards," he grunted, shooing her off as he nodded for them to open the doors. Meeryn stepped back and watched with large eyes as they opened the double doors to the city, and with a swallow she stepped through them. The sight that met her eyes made her blink: in front of her was a curved stone bridge with two torches burning on both ends of it; beyond that was a myriad of different buildings, the closest of which held an old forge.

There were also lots of people walking along the cobblestone streets.

Feeling lost and out of place, Meeryn shrouded herself in her crimson cloak and began walking towards a dark-skinned woman who was currently in the middle of talking with an enormous blonde man. She flinched when she came closer, because it only made her realize just how deep and gruff his voice was: however, she was kind of surprised to hear that he had a simple English accent rather than a fluty Nordic one.

"—ay whatever it takes," the man stated roughly, glaring down at the dark-skinned woman, "but we must have more swords for the Imperial soldiers."

"I just can't fill an order that size on my own," the woman sighed in exasperation, looking at him in dismay. "Why don't you just swallow that stubborn pride of yours and ask Eorlund Gray-Mane for help?"

"Ha!" the man scoffed, lip curling in disgust as he glared at the irritated woman. "I'd sooner bend my knee to Ulfric Stormcloak! Besides, Gray-Mane would never make steel for the Legion."

"Have it your way," the woman finally sighed, shaking her head in dismay before she turned and headed in the other direction. "I'll take the job, but don't expect a miracle… I doubt the Gods would give us such benevolence."

The man merely glared and headed uphill along a cobblestone path, muttering angrily to himself; the woman headed to an ancient-looking forge and continued working on whatever she had been doing before the man arrived. Meeryn had absolutely no idea where she was headed, or even which way to go in order to get to Dragon's Reach, so she timidly pulled her hood tight around her cheeks and approached the dark-skinned woman with hesitant eyes.

"Um, excuse me?" Meeryn called in a soft voice, trying to get her attention

"One moment!" the woman called, wiping her brow as she removed a glowing mould from the smelter; after dropping it into a bucket of water, she turned and looked at Meeryn with an expression of surprise. "Oh, my! I've never seen you playing around here before… what can I help you with, little lady?"

"Do you know how I can find the Jarl at Dragon's reach?" Meeryn quietly asked, averting her eyes and shuffling her feet. "I don't know where anything is… so, I was wondering if you could give me some directions."

"Well, Whiterun is ruled by the Jarl up in Dragon's Reach, which is up there on that hill," the woman stated, pointing up at the huge spires that towered above the buildings. "Then there's Jorrvaskr, which is the mead hall of the Companions. Their deeds of war and valor are… legendary. You might find it interesting to look around."

"Thank you so much," Meeryn sighed, shaking her head in relief. "Ma'am, what's your name?"

"My name is Adrianne Avenicci," the woman explained, cracking her neck and rolling her shoulders. "I have to get back to work before the storm hits us… there's a smell of rain in the air and I heard some thunder rolling across the plains a few hours ago. Don't forget to check inside my husband's shop if you need anything."

"I'll do that, and thanks again," the tiny girl murmured, smiling in relief from within her hood. When Adrianne turned to continue working, Meeryn shifted her attention to the cobblestone path that the angry man from earlier had headed down. There was a set of cobblestone steps leading towards a brick archway: with a sigh of confusion, Meeryn headed towards the stairs and jogged up them one at a time. When she made it to the top, she continued down the path at a leisurely pace.

She was feeling self-conscious and a bit unnerved as she looked at all of the houses.

A deafening crack of thunder made her jump into the air with a squeal, and she immediately looked up at the gray skies to see that they were slowly darkening. Meeryn shivered and drew her crimson cloak around herself when the wind slowly kicked up, but then she started hurrying down the street with her shoulders hunched. She could see Dragon's Reach in the distance, but the air was slowly growing hazy and the warmth was growing colder.

She didn't like how the wind brought a chill to her body.

Meeryn had just made it to a tree encircled by wooden gates and ornately placed little rivers when it began to rain.

"Aw, crap!" the redhead cried, darting towards the steps leading to Dragon's Reach and sprinting past small waterfalls and deep pools of liquid that served as both a decoration and a way for spring water and rain water to be filtered. The girl sprinted up the stone steps, already soaked to the bone thanks to the huge drops of rain that had begun pelting her: it seemed as though raindrops in Skyrim were a tad bit bigger than the raindrops back on Earth. Meeryn hastily ran around a corner to start up the next set of stairs, but she smacked into somebody hard enough to knock them over; the redhead squealed as she and whoever she'd crashed into fell onto the stairs.

She winced as she skinned her knee.

"OW!" a deep voice roared. "Watch where you're going, you idiotic lump! You could have seriously injured me!"

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Meeryn squealed, shakily getting to her feet and bowing repeatedly. "It was an accident! I apologize!"

Without waiting to see who she'd just crashed into, the girl continued on her way and sprinted up the stairs with her cloak flying behind her. After going up another set of stairs, she finally made it to a huge bridge and ran across it towards a set of colossal wooden doors. Meeryn immediately flew over to the left one and pushed with all of her strength, forcing it open and sliding inside just as the real downpour began: she struggled to force the door closed.

Then she took off her hood and doubled over, fighting to catch her breath.

Once she felt like she could breathe again, Meeryn attempted to look at her surroundings but was soon standing frozen in awe, eyes widening and mouth dropping open: she was standing in front of the entrance to an enormous, ancient-looking hall that felt like it belonged in a Viking movie. Six monstrous pillars held the roof up, and all of them were connected by beautifully carved arches. There were also three circular chandeliers holding lit candles dangling from the ceiling. The redhead shook her wet hair out before padding towards a flight of wooden steps. However, just as she was about to make her way up, an argument caught her attention and she paused.

"What would you have me do, then?" a male voice with a Nordic accent demanded. "Abandon my subjects?"

"My Lord, please," a slightly more posh voice sighed, making Meeryn frown a little in confusion. "This is no time for rash action: we need more information before we act."

After a moment, she headed up to the top of the steps and gaped again: two enormously long tables had been stretched out on either side of a roaring fire, and in front of them was a throne; above it rested a dragon's head. It was around that time that she spotted a man sitting in the throne, and beside him was another man wearing dark blue robes. Meeryn was about to head over to them when a rough hand gripped her long hair and the feeling of cold steel was pressed against her throat.

The girl squeaked like a mouse and froze, yellow eyes going wide in fright.

"What is the meaning of this interruption?" a deep female voice demanded, vibrating the girl's back. "Jarl Balgruuf is in the middle of an important meeting, and he personally requested that nobody disturb him. State your business."

"I-I-I have news of Helgen," Meeryn stammered, pressing her head back against her assailant's chest in order to avoid cutting herself on the woman's blade. "A dragon attacked it, and a lady named Gerdur sent me and my friend, Svena, because she thinks the village of Riverwood may be in danger! I only came here to tell you! I promise! "

"As Housecarl, it is my duty to protect the Jarl and all his people," the feminine voice stated. "You now have my attention because of your earlier statements, so explain yourself more clearly so I can assess the situation."

"A… a dragon destroyed Helgen," the redhead whimpered. "It's all gone!"

The hand on her hair was immediately lifted and instead two hands gripped her shoulders before spinning her around; Meeryn dizzily stumbled and tried not to trip like a klutz as she caught her footing, but a moment later she found herself staring into an indigo-skinned face. The teenager froze and her eyes widened in surprise when she took in the woman's angular jaw, pointed ears, slanted red eyes; after blinking at the contrast between her dark skin and bright maroon hair, Meeryn didn't even know what kind of being she was looking at: the woman didn't fit any sort of Earthly description for a living creature, even in a fairy tale book... so what on earth was she?

"You know about Helgen?" the odd-looking woman demanded, sheathing her sword before she started squeezing Meeryn's shoulders with an odd expression on her face. "Well… that changes matters entirely. The Jarl will definitely want to speak to you in person, so come with me: you are going to tell him about what you know."

"U-u-u-uh, if you say so?" Meeryn hesitantly replied, blinking rapidly when she was all but dragged towards the man sitting in the throne. When the girl was literally pushed by the woman from behind, she fell flat on her face and let out a squeak of pain; after a moment of groaning, she slowly sat up and rubbed her aching nose with a grimace.

"Who's this?" the man on the throne demanded, looking straight at Meeryn with a raised eyebrow.

"She claims to know about what happened to the village of Helgen," the woman stated clearly.

"Were you at Helgen?" the man asked, slowly standing up; Meeryn flinched and pouted at the ground when she realized the man was enormous in size just like Ulfric and Ralof had been. She didn't like being the smallest person around because it made her feel extremely weak in comparison. "Did you see this dragon with your own eyes?"

"Um…" Meeryn whispered, planting her hands in her lap as she sat on the floor. "Before I say anything, you should be aware of the fact that I don't know very much about what's going on right now. I don't even know who's who yet because I lost all of my memories in an accident before I was taken to Helgen. All I know is that lots of people in red and brown armor were going to execute a man named Ulfric Stormcloak, and that's when the dragon attacked."

"Hmph, I should have known Ulfric would get mixed up in all this," the man muttered, lips pressing together with an expression of extreme distaste; then he turned to the man wearing the blue robes and cocked an eyebrow. "What do you say now, Proventus? Should we continue to put faith in the strength of our walls against a dragon?

"My Lord, we should send troops to Riverwood at once," the dark-skinned woman stated, moving past Meeryn with a firm expression on her angular face. "It's in the most immediate danger if that dragon is lurking in the mountains."

"The Jarl of Falkreath will view that as a provocation!" the robed man protested. "He'll assume we're attempting to join Ulfric's side and attack him! We should—"\

"Enough!" Jarl Balgruuf finally barked, slamming his fist down on the throne. "I'll not stand idly by while a dragon burns my hold and slaughters my people! Irileth, send a detachment to Riverwood at once!"

"Yes, my Jarl," the dark-skinned woman stated proudly, pressing a hand against her heart and bowing a little.

"If you'll excuse me," Proventus muttered, folding his hands and glaring at the Jarl. "I'll return to my duties."

"That would be best," Jarl Balgruuf agreed, watching as the man left; then he turned to Meeryn and eyed her with probing eyes, taking note of her young features and small stature as she stood up and brushed herself off. "Well done, Little Lass: you sought me out on your own initiative, and by doing so you have done Whiterun a great service. I won't forget it, and as a way of saying thanks I will prepare a few gifts for you to take home with you."

"Thanks, and… um, you're welcome?" the girl uneasily replied, watching as he sat down.

"There is… one more thing you could do for me," the man stated slowly, eyeing her sparking hands with something close to admiration. "It's also something that would fit into your specific area of… talent. Come, let us go find Farengar, my court wizard: he is the one taking care of the situation involving dragons and… rumors of dragons."

"W-wha—?!" Meeryn squeaked, eyes widening when the man stood up again and started walking away.

"Since you're most likely another mage, I'll introduce you to my court wizard," the man called over his shoulder, waving the girl along; Meeryn uneasily began to follow him towards an open archway. "Farengar is most likely puttering around in his lab. He's always in there, day and night… I don't think he ever sleeps, quite honestly."

"He sounds like my third father," Meeryn muttered, cracking a bitter smile; the girl trailed the burly blonde man into another large room with lots of desks, and she blinked when she noticed a huge map sitting off to the side. She was half tempted to ask for a copy, but then she thought better of it and lowered her eyes.

"Farengar, I think I may have found someone to help you with your dragon project," Jarl Balgruuf suddenly chuckled, planting his hands on the desk and leaning forward. "Go ahead and fill her in with all the details."

"Hmn?" a voice with a slightly Scottish accent inquired; Meeryn blinked when a young man wearing a hooded blue outfit walked around the desk and made his way over to her. "So, the jarl thinks you could be of use to me? He must be referring to my research on dragons. Actually, I very well could use someone to fetch something for me."

"W-w-w-wait!" the redhead squeaked, waving her arms when Jarl Balgruuf smirked and walked away. "Um… well, I haven't decided what I'm going to do at all yet, but I guess I could hear you out… as long as it's not too extreme."

"Well, when I say fetch," the man hesitantly laughed, rubbing his arm with an awkward expression, "I actually mean delve into a dangerous ruin to retrieve an ancient stone tablet that may or may not be there. Is that… too extreme?"

"Um, yeah," Meeryn deadpanned, shaking her head before she looked up at him with curious eyes. "Still… what would doing that have to do with studying dragons? Delving into a dangerous ruin for a stone tablet doesn't seem as though it would benefit you, unless the tablet itself had info on dragons… is that why you want someone to get it?"

"Ah, so you're not just a brainless noblewoman… you're a thinker, perhaps even a scholar," the man noted, eyes lighting up in mild surprise when she blinked at him in offended confusion. "You see, when stories of dragons began to circulate, many dismissed them as fantasies, rumors, impossibilities. One sure mark of a fool is someone who classifies anything outside of his own experiences as being impossible. However, I began to search for information about dragons. 'Where had they gone all those years ago?' 'Where are they coming from?' Questions like that led me to discover that something had happened on this very day: I saw a black dragon flying up into the mountains."

"Okay, let's just say this in a hypothetical manner," Meeryn stated calmly. "Hypothetically, what exactly do you want me to do in order to get this stone tablet, and why on earth would I waste my time doing it?"

"Well, hypothetically, I could maybe teach you how to use magic on top of paying you," the man stated in a thoughtful tone; then he closed his eyes and lifted his palms, face going blank as the air above his fingers began to glow blue. After a moment, he turned his hand and held it out toward Meeryn's knee; the air around his body rippled only a second later, and the girl gasped as a beautiful golden light bathed her entire body in radiance.

When it was gone, all of her injuries had healed completely.

"Um, how did you do that?!" Meeryn asked, looking at him with large eyes. "Seriously, that was so cool!"

"Then let's make a deal," the man sighed, smiling in amusement. "I'll teach you how to heal yourself and others if you get the tablet from its resting place… and I'll also pay you one thousand pieces of gold for your efforts."

"Well, I still have to talk about it with my traveling companion before I make any set decisions," Meeryn stated uneasily, shaking her head before she sighed. "Still, why would you go so far to retrieve this tablet?"

"Oh, uh, I recently discovered that an ancient artifact called a Dragon Stone might be buried in a place called Bleak Falls Barrow," the man explained, folding his hands and hiding them with his billowing sleeves. "The tablet is said to have a map engraved on it… and it's a map of all the old dragon burial sites, which would definitely be handy."

"Bleak Falls Barrow," Meeryn murmured, shaking her head. "Is there anything else you can tell me about it?"

"Well, as of right now it's an old tomb that was once built by the Nords, but it's very old, perhaps predating the Dragon War by centuries," Farengar explained, looking down at the ground. "It's very close to Riverwood, which is a tiny little village resting only a few miles south from Whiterun. If you need to get accurate info, I'm sure some of the residents in that town can tell you what you seek. Aside from that, all I know is that you need a claw of sorts to get into the main antechamber… but I honestly don't know if the tablet is past the locked gateway or not."

"How could you know if the tablet IS in Bleak Falls Barrow?" Meeryn asked blankly. "You've never been there."

"Mages must preserve some secrets, mustn't we?" the man chuckled slyly. "I have very reliable resources."

"Could you tell me more about that Dragon War you mentioned?" the redhead asked, struck by a sudden curiosity. "It sounded kind of interesting…"

"I'm not surprised you've never heard of it… even I used to think it was a myth," the man murmured. "However, the Dragon War was a real event, although the barest glimmer of knowledge has come down to us. Far back in the Mythic Era, the dragons were worshiped as gods in Skyrim. Many of the monumental ruins that still dot the landscape were, in fact, built as temples to the dragons. The details are lost, but at some point the Nords rebelled… and after a terrible war, they overthrew the dragons."

"Were all of the dragons killed in the war?" Meeryn asked, eyes widening in childish awe.

"Oh no, many were killed, of course, but many survived into historical times," the man explained. "Why, this very palace was built by one of Balgruuf's ancestors in order to capture a dragon— hence its name, 'Dragonsreach.'"

"Are you two finished?" Jarl Balgruuf himself inquired, peering around the entrance. "I have a feeling that this endeavor of yours is of the highest importance, and as of right now, I'm making finding this tablet a top priority."

"Of course, Jarl Balgruuf," Farengar laughed, eyes twinkling in delight from inside his dark blue hood. "You seem to have found me an able assistant, and I'm sure she will prove herself useful in the long run. She has potential."

"I haven't exactly agreed to anything yet," Meeryn calmly pointed out.

"Well, if you succeed at this, you will be paid and Whiterun will be in your debt," the blonde man stated firmly, looking down at her with commanding green eyes. "You may take as much time as you need to think it over."

With that, the man strode out of the room again and returned to his throne.


End file.
